There’s something not quite right about this story. 10,000 tickets were issued by a robot in the first two weeks of being setup, with nothing to suggest there will be a slow down.
With so many violations, [Morrison Police Chief Bill] Vinelli said the town had to jump to a higher data plan to store all the tickets. […] Each ticket is $40, meaning the camera brought in more than $400,000 during that two-week period.
They issued so many tickets they ran out of storage.
Hint: if enough people refuse to pay these robotic tickets, as an act of civil disobedience, the cost of operating the system will cause it to fail.
So what’s the point of this extremely excessive revenue generation system targeting outsiders?
The cameras are setup to issue tickets to people leaving town. So it’s a tax on city people? A tax on people who live somewhere else, like an amusement park ticket?
This doesn’t even sound like a 25 mph street, given that more than 10,000 cars in two weeks have driven through… like the throughput of a highway.
Can’t we just call it a toll road?
A toll road was constructed up Mount Vernon Canyon passing through the town of Mount Vernon. In 1880 the road was purchased by Jefferson County and opened up for free travel.
Fast forward to today:
The town’s not doing it to make money…
More than 90% of police activity is issuing speeding tickets.
Why not raise the speed limit? Has the town, for example, considered why there are so many cars and how to avoid issuing tickets or get rid of the traffic?
In 2021 a Morrison Police Chief was forced to resign when ticket revenue dipped.
The system reads to me like it’s sucking money without a reason.
Maybe if the money made were used to build a train so there’s no need for cars, then we could see the reason? What will the town make with the money if not doing it for the money?
Taking a look at Morrison demographics, it has a population of 400 people and 93% white. What’s the demographic data on the people they are taxing?
Related: Speed camera tickets don’t have to be paid if there was a “dead man driving“.
Also related: “Increased crashes where traffic cameras are posted”
And finally, related: “The $180K grant in 1966 to develop automated license plate readers.“