Beverly Hills Docs - Main Page - Illegal Red Light Cameras

www.highwayrobbery.net

If you haven't already done so, please read the Beverly Hills section on the Camera Towns page

It is possible to completely ignore a Beverly Hills red light camera ticket !

1. The Los Angeles County Superior Court does not report ignored red light camera tickets to the DMV. More info is in "Countywide Information," which is Docs Set # 2 on the LA County Documents page.

2. If a "ticket" you received thru the US Mail does not have the Superior Court's name and address on it, it is a fake ticket, what I call a "Snitch Ticket." For more details about Snitch Tickets, see the Snitch Ticket section at the top of the Your Ticket page.

Yes, this is the webpage with a LOT of info about tickets from the red light cameras in Beverly Hills.

But first, this important political announcement ...

Vote No on Sheila Kuehl

Do you live in LA County? Was Zev Yaroslavsky your County Supervisor? (Until Nov. 2014, he represented the Third District, which includes the central and western San Fernando Valley, Malibu, Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly Hills, the City of West Hollywood, and part of Hollywood.)

Zev "termed out," and in the Nov. 4, 2014 election, Sheila Kuehl won the race to succeed him, by a narrow margin.

Sheila Kuehl authored 3
speed camera bills

Sheila "Kuehl Cams" Kuehl, in 2007

During her career in the California Legislature, Kuehl made three attempts to pass bills to allow the use of automated speed enforcement (photo radar) in California.

As an LA County Supervisor, she has a seat on the MTA/Metro board and she will be a vote to continue and expand Metro's huge (101 cameras, so far) red light camera system.
She also voted to put an additional LA County-wide sales tax, to go to Metro, on the Nov. 2016 ballot - and it passed. (See Measure M on the Action/Legis page, for more about that tax.)

Kuehl may be up for re-election in 2022.

Maps of Beverly Hills and West
Hollywood red light cameras

The cameras in West Hollywood were shut down in Feb. 2020.

This table made by highwayrobbery.net, using official reports obtained from the City.
Source docs:
Official Report, July 2004
Official Reports 2008 & 2009 Annual Totals
Official Reports 2008 - 2011
Official Reports 2010 - 2011
Official Reports Nov. - Dec. 2011
Official Reports Jan.- Feb. 2012
Official Reports Feb. 2012 - Sept. 2012
Official Reports Oct. 2012 - Nov. 2012
Official Reports Oct. 2012 - Dec. 2012
Official Reports Nov. 2012
Official Reports, Apr. 2008 - May 2013
Official Reports, Feb. 2008 - June 2013
Official Reports, Aug. 2008 -Aug. 2013
Official Reports, Sept. 2013 - Jan. 2014
Official Reports, Feb. 2014 - June 2014
Official Reports to End of RedFlex Program, July - Oct. 2014
(New ACS/Xerox/Conduent System Started in June 2015)
Official Reports, May - June 2015
Official Reports, Aug. - Nov. 2015
Official Report (expanded), June 2015
Official Reports, July 2015 - Apr. 2016 (18 MB)
Official Reports, May - June 2016
Official Reports, Jul. - Oct. 2016
Official Year-End Report 2016
Official Reports, Nov. 2016 - Mar. 2017
Official Reports, Apr. 2017 - July 2017
Official Reports, Aug. - Sept. 2017
Official Reports, Oct. 2017 - Apr. 2018
Official Year-End Report 2017
Official Reports, May - June 2018
Official Report, July 2018
Official Report, Dec. 2018
Official Year-End Report 2018
Official Report, Jan. 2019
Official Report, Feb. 2019
Official Report, Mar. 2019
Official Report, May 2019
Official Report, June 2019
Official Report, July 2019
Official Report, Oct. 2019
Official Report, Dec. 2019
Official Year-End Report 2019 (23)
Official Reports, Jan. - Feb. 2020
Official Report, Mar. 2020

( ) indicates a footnote.
(1) Annual total, provided by City.
(2) These annual totals or projections are by highwayrobbery.net. Projections are based upon the data shown in the table above. As of 1-25-20 the 2019 column F projection was based upon ten months of data. The 2019 camera-by-camera and citywide totals are not projections.
(3) Un-used columns are to allow for later expansion of City's system.
(4) Monthly average for the year indicated.
(5) From the Monthly Traffic Reports filed with the City's Traffic and Parking Commission, available at the City's website. The figures appear to include warning tickets.
Traffic Reports to T&P Commission, 2015 - 2020
(6) Monthly camera-by-camera data was requested on (date).

(7) For the Xerox cameras beginning in 2015, the top number, in red, is "Events," the second number (not having a suffix) is "Possible Violations," and the last figure is "Violations Mailed" (not including warnings).
In each Xerox camera's early months, TS=test shots, W=warning letters issued.

For the camera systems before 2015, any figures in red type (or, if you are looking at this table in black and white, the upper figure
when there are two or more figures in a cell) are what RedFlex called Total Violations, or all incidents
recorded by the cameras, and due to time limitations may have been posted here only for selected
intersections or months. If there is sufficient public interest, the remaining intersections and/or months will be posted. The
figures in black type are what ACS (the city's camera supplier until 2007) calls Citations Issued and
RedFlex (the supplier between 2008 and 2014) calls Notices Printed, and represent the sum of genuine
citations issued (those filed with the court) plus any Nominations mailed (not filed with
the court, a.k.a. Snitch Tickets).

(8) The RedFlex camera enforcement was believed to be on traffic on the first-named street, but the direction
of enforcement (north, south, east, west, thru, left, right) shown here may be incorrect..
(9) One of these camera codes (Cam #) will appear in the data bar above or near the
photos on your ticket.
(10) The direction of enforcement shown for the Xerox cameras (north, south, east, west) shown here is believed to be correct.
(11) Full intersection-by-intersection data for this month has not yet been posted in the table, but is available
at one of the links just below the table.
(12) Data for this month has not yet been requested.
(13) Listen to the YouTube video about Wilshire/Whittier, in Set # 4, below.
(14) New cameras started June 2015 - See Set # 3, below.
(15) New cameras started in May 2016 - See Set # 7, below.
(16) Coldwater Canyon connects to Beverly Drive, then to this intersection.
(17) For more info about monthly revenue, see Set # 5, below.
(18) In most other cities on this website, the pairs of figures in this column are the citywide total of citations, and the citywide total of rolling
right (or left turn) citations, as retrieved from the annual reports required, beginning with 2013, by CVC 21455.5(i). Most
cities make their annual reports available by the Fall of the following calendar year, but as of Aug. 2019 the City of Beverly Hills had not
produced 2015, 2016, 2017 or 2018 reports giving a breakout of tickets by movement (left, right, straight), so the right turn figures given for those
years in the table above have been estimated, as follows.
The 2015 and 2016 figures were estimated by using the proportions found in the City's report for 2014.
Beginning with 2017, the City's monthly and year-end reports included, for each camera as well as citywide, an average
late time. Highwayrobbery.net used those late times, and a formula, to estimate the number of
right turn tickets generated by each camera, and citywide, in 2017 and 2018. The formula used was Y x ((L - 0.5)/Z) where Y is the number of
tickets (of all movements) issued as reported by the City, L is average late time for the particular camera, as reported by the City, and Z is our
estimate of the average late time for a right turn ticket during the year (37 sec. in 2017 and 24 sec. in 2018, the second highest late time
reported by the City). The number shown in blue is the arithmetic total of the figures shown for the individual cameras. Also see Set # 6, below.
(19) If you have a ticket from this camera, see Set # 7, below, and please email us.
(20) Per the official reports (linked above) cameras 6093 and 6094 operated for only eight days in April 2018 and nine days in May 2018.
(21) Monthly camera-by-camera data was requested on 5-2-19, 6-8-19 and 7-25-19 and was received on 8-2-19.
(22) These figures for average time into red, or average Late Time, are from the monthly and annual official reports linked above. No annual figures
have been made available for 2015, 2016 or 2019. The citywide annual figure posted above for 2019 is highwayrobbery.net's unweighted average
of the monthly citywide figures. Also see Set # 2, below.
(23) The official year-end report for 2019 (which gives the average time into red for each camera) was requested
on 1-25-20 and again on 3-18-20.

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 2
No Oversight: No More "Late Time" Reports

During the time RedFlex operated the City's cameras, the City provided bar graphs of Late Times (Time into Red), for each of its cameras.
The RedFlex graphs - entitled RedFlex Redlight Offender Statistics (RROS) - tracked violations recorded, not tickets issued.
(A large number of long Late Time violations in a curb lane is believed to indicate heavy ticketing on right turns. The curb lane will be the lane with the highest lane number.)

Grand Terrace late times bar chart

The picture above is a RROS example from another city.

July 2008
Jan. 2009
July 2009
Jan. 2010
July 2011
Oct. 2011
Feb. 2012
July 2012
Aug. 2012
July 2013
June 2014

Bar graphs, or the equivalent, are available for more than fifty other cities - see the list in the expanded version of Defect # 9.

In May 2016 we began trying to obtain Late Time reports for the cameras Xerox/Conduent operates for the City. Here is the request we made on Nov. 8, 2017:

"Reports discussing, tabulating or listing Late Times (or, Time into Red, or number of seconds of red traffic signal, or the egregiousness) of the Possible Violations and/or Violations Mailed in each and/or any of the months, or any other time period, May 2016 to the present."

"The City's contract with Xerox [now Conduent] says (at 3(o) of Exhibit B): 'Vendor shall maintain a database... with the following information... ii. Number of seconds of red traffic signal.'"

"If the City still has no responsive reports, please instead provide a digital copy of the red light camera ticket database, excluding photos or personal information about the driver but not excluding the zip code that the ticket was sent to and not excluding the age or birth year of the person cited."

In an email dated Nov. 22, 2017 the BHPD replied,

"These reports will be provided at a later date."

There were multiple put offs until Oct. 2018 when we received the monthly report for July 2018, which was in a new format and included an average late time and an average speed, for each camera.
Although some of those figures have been added to the big Set # 1 table above, we have the following concerns about them.

1. They may not be reliable.

a. Many of the late time figures vary widely, month-to-month. Example: For the camera at eastbound Olympic/Beverly, the figures for the first three months
of 2019 were reported to be 2.3, 27.0, and 2.0.
b. The average speed figures do not vary much, month-to-month. Looking at the first seven months of 2019, for ten of the cameras the seven monthly average speeds vary by four mph or less (including three cameras where it varies by only one mph), and of those ten cameras, six have very similar average speeds, all fitting within the range of of 17 - 22 mph.

2. Even if they were found to be completely reliable, Conduent's late time figures will be of very limited use to City safety engineers (and the public) as Conduent does not break the figures down by lane or time of day, like the software of the City's former vendor RedFlex does.

Also see Set # 6 below, and footnote 18 to the big Set # 1 table, above.

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 3
The Contract

The 2007 Contract

In Sept. 2012 the City extended the 2007 contract to Oct. 2013. The City did not negotiate a lower price, so paid approx. $277,000 too much for the year. See FAQ # 17. The report submitted for the extension revealed that they made a net profit of nearly $1 million during the previous year.

Invoices received in July 2013 showed (and again in July 2014) show that the City continued to pay $5870 per camera, per month.

In Aug. 2013 the city manager extended the contract to Oct. 14, 2014.

The 2014 Contract - Expanding, and Then Expanding More

At their Oct. 7, 2014 meeting the City Council approved 4 - 1 a staff recommendation to extend the program for five more years, to replace RedFlex with Xerox/ACS, and to add six more cameras. (Safer Streets LA did a study of the proposed new cameras, and found them to be unwarranted.)

The selection of Xerox/ACS over RedFlex supposedly was due to Xerox' bid ($638,880 per year) being lower than RedFlex' ($792,000).

The new contract says that the City will pay Xerox $3694 per month for each of the cameras the company will install at the locations formerly covered by RedFlex cameras.

Strangely, the City put the contract out to bid without first making an attempt to negotiate with RedFlex. Had they negotiated with RedFlex they should have been able to obtain the same pricing as that negotiated by another RedFlex client, Elk Grove, California, whose March 2014 contract for its five camera system includes this pricing table.

A complete copy of the Elk Grove contract is available on the Elk Grove Docs page.

Did RedFlex accidentally run over the Beverly Hills city hall mascot, or something?

When I applied the Elk Grove pricing and terms to Beverly Hills, I got this:

Just looking at the rent over five years, without the adjustments highwayrobbery.net suggests for loyalty, etc. and the cost of the transition, RedFlex would have been cheaper by $370,080. And with Xerox the City has taken on a large cancellation fee while the typical RedFlex renewal contract - like Elk Grove's - allows cancellation with no fee.

To cover the $370,080 extra rent, Beverly Hills will need to issue an extra 4112 tickets (the City's fine revenue averaged $90 for each ticket it issued, in 2013).

A Jan. 20, 2015 Beverly Hills Courier article said that the Xerox cameras would be in operation by mid-February 2015. A later article said that operation would begin in June - and it did. That additional four-month delay in re-starting the cameras brought highwayrobbery.net's estimate of the revenue lost during the transition to $800,000.

2016: Expanding More

On May 3, 2016 the 30-day warning period began for new cameras at Olympic and Beverly Drive. See Set # 7 below for more about the heavy ticketing by those new cameras.

This list of contracts and amendments may not be up-to-date - there could be a contract or amendment later than the one listed above.

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 4
Info About Wilshire/Whittier

In Oct. 2013 Channel 4 KNBC did a story about Jay Beeber's report on the short yellow at Wilshire and Whittier and its effect on the number of tickets.

On Feb. 3, 2014 Channel 5 KTLA did an interview with Beeber.

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 5
The Revenue

The rightmost column in the Set # 1 table, above, shows the monthly red light camera ticket fine revenue the City has received from the court. The Revenue Spreadsheet on the LA County Docs page shows the revenue received by all red light camera cities in LA County.

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 6
No Oversight:   Missing Annual Reports

California Senate Bill 1303 of 2012 requires camera vendors to file an annual report with the Judicial Council for each California city serviced by the vendor. The reports
are supposed to give a breakdown of the quantity of citations issued (into straight, right, and left), and also state the number of traffic collisions that
occurred at each intersection prior to and after the installation of the camera. SB 1303 was codified as CVC 21455.5(i).

In response to highwayrobbery.net's requests for copies of the annual reports covering 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 the BHPD sent documents which did not include the required
breakout by movement or the collision history. Our repeated requests for reports compliant with CVC 21455.5(i) have been met with multiple put offs. As a result,
the right turn figures given for those four years in the Set # 1 table above are our estimates. See the table's footnote 18 for more details.

On Feb. 14, 2019 highwayrobbery.net sent the city council a copy of the following email originally sent to the BHPD in Nov. 2017:

    The City's contract with Conduent says (at 3(n) of Exhibit B), "Vendor shall all provide an annual report to the Judicial Council pursuant to
    CVC requirements." Has the vendor given you an ETA for the annual reports for 2015 and 2016? Here I should note that while
    fellow (until 2019) Xerox/Conduent customer San Francisco has reported, "Our vendor, Xerox [now Conduent], does not track whether a violation involved traveling
    straight through the intersection, turning right, or turning left," (the breakout by movement described in CVC 21455.5(i)), in
    Beverly Hills the contract (at 3(o) of Exhibit B) requires Xerox to do that tracking: "Vendor shall maintain a database... with the
    following information... iii. Type of violation (such as right turn, left turn, or straight through)."

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 7
No Oversight: Heavy Ticketing at Olympic/Beverly in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020

On 8-2-18 we wrote to the BHPD:

For Lt. Moreno:

I periodically request the City's camera-by-camera ticketing totals and publish them on my website highwayrobbery (dot) net.

The most recent figures I have - which were requested on April 9 and received on June 18 - show that in the first four months of 2018 the Ebd Olympic/Beverwil/Beverly camera produced about 36% of all the camera tickets citywide, up from 31% in
2017.

Is anything being done to fix that situation? Are you prosecuting those tickets, or dismissing/refunding them?

On 8-6-18 Lt. Moreno replied (the following is his entire reply):

"Thank you for your e-mail. Our photo red light program is in compliance with all state
and federal laws. All who are issued a photo red light ticket are afforded the
opportunity to dispute them in a court of law. Thank you again for your inquiry."

On 8-7-18 we wrote to the city council:

For the Beverly Hills City Council:

In the first four months of 2018 the red light camera monitoring eastbound cars at Olympic/Beverwil/Beverly
produced about 36% of all the camera tickets citywide, up from 31% in 2017, while the camera monitoring
westbound cars at that intersection produced just 3% of all the tickets.

If the current rate of ticketing continues through the end of the year, the 2018 total fine for eastbound tickets at
that intersection will be $3.3 million.

I wrote to the BHPD about this, without success - see the thread [above].

Neither the council nor City staff replied to that email, but the next two sets of ticketing reports we received, which covered the months
of May, June and July 2018 (those reports are at links in Set # 1, above) showed that ticketing at the intersection was way down.

Ticketing Back Up in Late 2018 and 2019

On Feb. 14, 2019 we received the ticketing reports for Aug. - Dec. 2018, which showed that ticketing in December 2018 was three times the rate in July - Oct. 2018. Later that day (Feb. 14) we emailed the city council about the jump in ticketing.

Cameras Not Justified

Interestingly, well before the cameras were installed at the intersection, accident data did not seem to justify putting cameras there. A 2015 staff report to the city council said (on page one):

"Based upon review of accident data, the average collision rate is equal to the statewide average for comparable intersections."

Nevertheless, that staff report recommended that the intersection and its signals should be modified, and in May of 2017 the City awarded a contract for that work. Additional documents:

Mar. 2017 Design Specs (part of RFP) (14MB file)
May 2017 Award of Contract

We don't yet know just when the contract work was carried out, but it is possible that it brought the (temporary) reduction in ticketing which became visible in April 2018.

The City Responds, but Denies Refund

On Aug. 3, 2019 the City wrote:

We determined there was room to make modifications to the intersection to reduce the number of citations generated by the photo red light.
Here are the steps which we took:
Additional signs warning of the photo enforced enforcement will be posted on the approach (eastbound). It should be noted that
current signage at the intersection complies with California State Law.
The yellow phase at Beverly Dr. will be adjusted to an even higher time than what is mandated by State Law (3.06 secs)."

We wrote right back asking about refunds, and on Aug. 5 the City wrote:

"Since the tickets were legally issued, we can’t take them back."

We have seen big refunds in other cities, examples being South San Francisco and currently in San Mateo. Why can't Beverly Hills make a refund?

The City has $192 million of unassigned funds, "... available for spending at the City's discretion." (Per page 24 of the City's
annual audit book (the "CAFR"), which came out in December 2018.) It would take only 1% of that Mad Money to refund the City's cut of
the fines so unfairly imposed at eastbound Olympic/Beverly.

Beverly Hills Docs Set # 8
More Coming

There may be some more Beverly Hills information posted soon. Mark your calendar to remind you to come back here and look!

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