Official Site of The State of New Jersey

As communities across the nation seek to address crashes associated with red light running, they are increasingly looking for additional tools to supplement their traditional overburdened enforcement resources. One of the safety tools many communities have employed is a Red Light Running (RLR) Automated Enforcement Program.

On January 13, 2008, Assembly Bill 4314 (pdf 74k) was signed into law requiring the Commissioner of Transportation to establish a five-year pilot program to determine the effectiveness of the installation and utilization of traffic control signal monitoring systems in New Jersey. A traffic control signal monitoring system (also known as a RLR system) is an integrated system or device utilizing a camera, or a multiple camera system, and vehicle sensors which work in conjunction with a traffic control signal to produce images of vehicles disregarding a red signal or “running a red light.”

In support of the Governor’s request that the RLR program be implemented in a careful and deliberate manner, and that implementation be undertaken in a staged fashion, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) established that up to 12 jurisdictions would be approved for RLR programs during the first year of implementation.

This application process was intended to establish locations throughout New Jersey that demonstrated red light running history and that efforts such as engineering, enforcement and education had not shown to be effective in decreasing violations and/or crashes and that a traffic control signal monitoring system may be an effective tool to aid in increasing safety at these locations.

Approval of Red Light Running (RLR) locations were based upon the Federal Highway Administration’s accepted methodologies (pdf 12k) reflected in the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) Highway Safety Improvement Program. As such, crash criteria for candidate locations were to comport with applicable crash criteria of the NJDOT Intersection Improvement Program (IIP), Pedestrian Program (PP), Left Turn Crash Reduction Program (LTCRP), Right Angle Crash Reduction/Signalization Program (RACRP), and the Same Direction Crash Reduction Program (SDCRP).

Approval of RLR locations were also based on a demonstrated red light running history as outlined in the data submitted for each proposed location and where previous engineering, enforcement, and education efforts have not corrected this situation.

There were 73 authorized and operational red-light camera intersections throughout the state when the five-year pilot program concluded.