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Tribune investigation: IDOT approves red light cameras for already safe intersections

As rejection letters go, the Illinois Department of Transportation’s message last year seemed pretty clear.

Oakbrook Terrace wanted to put red light cameras at a busy but relatively safe intersection. IDOT must approve cameras on state routes in the suburbs, and it said no: Cameras are for boosting safety, and the intersection’s “low crash rates” did not support a need for cameras.

In just a few months, that no would turn into a yes.

It was a yes that, records show, came after the intervention of a powerful state senator who received campaign cash from the red light camera firm that stood to make millions of dollars from those Oakbrook Terrace cameras. The senator’s involvement prompted dozens of emails between IDOT officials — with large passages of that correspondence kept secret to this day by IDOT.

What happened at Illinois Highway 83 and 22nd Street highlights the inconsistent and at times contradictory way IDOT has approved the controversial cameras at nearly 200 intersections across the suburbs.

Ten years ago, the General Assembly allowed suburbs to install cameras, but for state routes, typically the busiest roads, IDOT needed to approve. And IDOT was talking tough. Engineers wanted cameras put only in truly dangerous places where no other fix had improved safety.

Yet, a Tribune analysis found that often didn’t happen. Among the findings:

*More than half the intersections with cameras scored among the safest in IDOT studies at the time the agency approved the cameras.

*IDOT, more often than not, allowed cameras at places that didn’t meet its own threshold for whether an intersection had a red light crash problem.

*Of current cameras, one-fourth were granted permits in spots with no red-light-related crashes in at least three years.

Safe corners get cameras

IDOT for years has awarded permits for red light cameras at relatively safe corners, no matter the metric used to assess the crash risk at those locations. Click on the tabs or an intersection to learn more.

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IDOT says cameras can benefit an intersection approach with 3 or more T-bone or turning crashes a year — even if some may not involve a red-light runner.

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The Tribune calculated whether an intersection approach had a documented crash caused by a driver running a red light.

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IDOT publishes a periodic ranking of crash risk of entire intersections.

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As the suburban red light program has quietly grown into one of the country’s largest, the Tribune found IDOT watered down the program’s standards and requirements over the years, allowing more and more cameras at intersections that had few crashes.

IDOT has approved cameras on corners with what it called “marginal” crash histories, determining they were nonetheless dangerous. IDOT’s threshhold for what’s dangerous was changed in its policy to include locations where a mayor declared a “perceived” problem at a corner, no matter what the data said.

The state agency did not dispute the Tribune’s findings. However, agency officials said they had to balance their focus on safety with the law’s intent to let suburbs have cameras.

“It’s their camera system, not the department’s,” said Steve Travia, who oversees IDOT’s project implementation for the Chicago area. “When they approach us, we look at the merits of their application for a highway permit to build infrastructure on our right of way based on the application.”

As for the Oakbrook Terrace decision, IDOT said it felt no political pressure and did nothing wrong.

Michael Manzo, a village council member in Oak Brook, a suburb next to Oakbrook Terrace, helped lead the unsuccessful fight against the Oakbrook Terrace cameras. He called IDOT’s flip-flop a “disgraceful” decision to aid the owners of a politically connected camera firm.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “This is going to be, for these individuals, one of the most lucrative corners in the state of Illinois, and that’s why they fought so hard to keep it.”

Complaints in suburbs too

Questions about red light cameras have long been dominated by the controversial program run by Chicago. Tribune investigations exposed a $2 million bribery scheme that sent a former top city administrator to prison as well as shaky ticketing processes that spurred a nearly $40 million proposed class-action settlement.

There have been years of investigations into suburban red light cameras as well.

Among them: The Tribune in 2009 showed how the first suburb to install a camera bragged that it was like an ATM, even though it tagged mostly low-risk rolling right turns on red. That same year, the Daily Herald found most tickets across the suburbs were for right turns on red at low-risk intersections. And the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark this year showed how a clout-heavy firm, Safespeed, took over the lucrative red light industry in the near western suburbs.

The Tribune’s latest review focused on how IDOT, which oversees the vast majority of red light cameras in the suburbs, has used varying standards that were inconsistently applied to approve the cameras.

The Tribune analysis included reviewing thousands of pages of records and crunching a decade’s worth of IDOT crash and intersection data. IDOT could not provide an accurate list of all camera locations, so reporters crisscrossed the suburbs to locate and count cameras on state routes.

IDOT’s oversight can be traced to a 2006 law that began as a bill to address drivers weaving around railroad gates. That legislation evolved — with no push from IDOT — to expanding red light cameras beyond Chicago and into the rest of the six-county area.

With red light firms working behind the scenes to get passage, advocates at the time said that the move was about safety. While research has been mixed, it generally has supported the idea that cameras — if installed at hazardous intersections — can reduce the most dangerous crashes.

But, state officials have said, cameras can do more harm than good at relatively safe intersections. Ticket-leery drivers can be scared into slamming on their brakes at yellow lights, causing rear-end crashes. Or drivers who could make a legal right turn on red may instead cause backups by sitting at intersections, out of fear of a ticket.

The law, however, set up no process to pick the best intersections for cameras. IDOT stepped in to create the process, as did lobbyists and a lawmaker close to the red light firms.

IDOT’s staff initially drafted a policy in 2006 that would have required specific metrics to define a dangerous intersection. Key among them: at least five T-bone or left-turn crashes a year attributed to someone running a red light. IDOT officials in an interview said that was based on federal policies and the agency’s own experience with what number could signal a dangerous problem.

Under the draft policy, suburbs wanting cameras also had to show a steady or increasing number of red light violations at those intersections. Suburbs would have to produce a study that analyzed how a camera would affect crashes, including whether installing one would have the adverse effect of boosting rear-end crashes.

If the initial draft policy had been enacted, the Tribune found, it could have disqualified 181 of 184 intersections on state routes that currently have cameras.

But that draft was never adopted. It’s unclear why.

Citing the state’s open records law, the Tribune sought records from IDOT about how the agency developed its policy — from drafts of the policy to the emails discussing it. IDOT provided 183 pages, but a third of them were blacked out, with IDOT citing a provision in the law that allows it to keep secret the internal discussions about how policies evolve.

Cameras at safe corners

The Tribune previously reported how the dominant suburban red light firm at the time — Redspeed — with the help of then-state Rep. Angelo “Skip” Saviano, R-Elmwood Park, pushed the legislation while Saviano collected campaign cash from firms tied to a top Redspeed official.

Emails recently obtained by the Tribune also show that Saviano met with IDOT and a Redspeed official to help come up with revisions to the draft policy that ultimately lowered the threshold for how dangerous an intersection had to be for cameras to be considered.

The policy that went into effect eliminated the requirement for a specific number of crashes and the study from suburbs requesting cameras.

Instead, intersections had to have “crashes attributable to red light violations.”

IDOT officials said they couldn’t recall the specific reasons for the changes but said, in general, it’s not unusual for the agency to seek input from industries affected by new rules, and the agency didn’t feel pressure to weaken its draft rules.

“These things tend to be more of a living document than hard-and-fast rules that can’t change,” Travia said.

Regardless, as IDOT revised its red light camera policy over the years, the agency has maintained that boosting safety was the program’s primary aim and that cameras should only be put in places with documented safety problems. In its reviews, IDOT has said crash statistics are the primary or major indicator of a problem.

But the Tribune found the agency often approved red light cameras in places where danger appeared to be low.

IDOT since 2007 has analyzed crash data on roughly 40,000 intersections to determine the most dangerous 5 percent. In later years, the agency also rated the intersections outside the 5 percent as having high, medium, low or minimal danger.

The Tribune used IDOT’s data to determine danger levels for all intersections at the time the agency issued red light permits, and it found:

*The majority of intersections — 96 of 184 — had scores at “low” or “minimal” danger risk, the lowest categories.

*Only 24 intersections made the list of the most dangerous 5 percent of intersections at the time IDOT issued its permits. That’s less than one of every seven intersections approved by IDOT.

Although IDOT at times cited its crash data analysis in its review of red-light applications, agency officials told the Tribune the studies meant little in deciding where cameras go.

“The red light running policy is just really designed to help guide folks who are trying to take advantage of the law passed by the General Assembly,” Travia said. “So if the municipality wants to put a camera in because they have a problem in their town, that may not make it the worst, or it may not rise to being a 5 percent location. It may still be a legitimate concern for them.”

Agency officials said they instead focused on different metrics that IDOT tabulated for each stretch of roadway approaching an intersection, known as an approach leg. When a suburb requested a red light camera, IDOT reviewed the previous three years of crash data to see if there’s enough T-bone or turning crashes to suggest a crash problem. Records showed the agency set the threshold at an average of three a year.

The agency at times cited the threshold as a reason to deny cameras, records show. But often, the Tribune analysis found, IDOT allowed cameras at places that didn’t meet the threshold.

The Tribune reviewed the 287 approach legs with cameras. It found 204 legs — or 71 percent — didn’t meet IDOT’s metric for suggesting a crash problem.

And at 78 legs, there were no crashes attributed to someone disregarding a traffic control device or turning on red in the three years before a permit was issued.

IDOT’s policy has always stated cameras “should be installed only where a safety problem … has been documented.”

But IDOT says the word “should” gives it wiggle room.

“It does not say ‘shall’ or ‘will’ be installed only where a safety problem has been documented, but ‘should,'” IDOT spokesman Guy Tridgell said in an email.

Agency officials said approvals are done on a case-by-case basis and that crashes are just one factor. IDOT policies allow a permit if a mayor and police chief write letters stating there is a “perceived safety problem due to red light running,” even if there were few crashes there.

And records show IDOT has allowed cameras at corners with low crash levels.

That’s how Berwyn got a camera in 2007 at eastbound Cermak Road and Ridgeland Avenue.

IDOT initially denied the request, saying crash data “only indicate a few” red-light-related crashes. But the police chief wrote an appeal letter, and IDOT then approved the permit.

And it’s how Lake Zurich got IDOT’s approval for cameras in 2009 on the east and west approaches of U.S. Highway 12 at June Terrace, an access road to busy commercial strips.

IDOT initially denied the permit there too, citing low crash levels. The red light vendor did a survey and found the only violators at those approaches were lower-risk, rolling right turns on red. But the suburb appealed and turned in new surveys with new sets of alleged violations that included more examples of alleged red light runners. IDOT reversed course.

And it’s how Olympia Fields got a camera in 2009 for the westbound approach at U.S. Highway 30 and Orchard Drive. The Tribune found zero crashes caused by a red light runner in the prior three years.

Records show IDOT approved a permit because the camera vendor’s survey counted seven red light violations over 12 hours. The red light camera vendor didn’t say how many of those were rolling right turns on red.

Each of those decisions garnered little public attention or controversy.

That wouldn’t be the case with IDOT’s back-and-forth over cameras just outside the popular west suburban Oakbrook mall, where Oakbrook Terrace and Safespeed had been eyeing cameras for years.

Senators for Safespeed

Illinois 83 and 22nd Street is sandwiched between the mall and I-88. It’s also split between two suburbs: Oak Brook and Oakbrook Terrace.

It sees some of the largest traffic volumes in the state and at one point was considered among the most dangerous in Illinois.

But that was before IDOT spent millions of dollars adding lanes and upgrading the signals from 2010 through 2012. Crashes began dropping.

That didn’t stop Oakbrook Terrace and Safespeed from seeking cameras there in 2013. As part of its pitch, Safespeed said it had spotted nearly 800 red light violations there over a 24-hour period, records show.

IDOT wasn’t convinced of a problem. In its written assessment of the application, it noted just “a couple” of crashes that might be red light related since construction ended, and it told the suburb to come back in two years if crashes didn’t drop.

But crashes did drop. In 2015, IDOT found the intersection had so few crashes that it was deemed to be among the safest the agency oversaw. It labeled the safety risk to drivers as “minimal,” the lowest of five categories, records show.

But that same year, Oakbrook Terrace and Safespeed came back to IDOT again.

In its 2015 application, Safespeed’s latest study cited half the violations as the 2013 one. Yet the suburb and Safespeed had something else that year: endorsements from lawmakers who received campaign cash from Safespeed.

One was from Sen. Tom Cullerton, D-Villa Park, who by 2015 had received $3,000 from firms tied to Safespeed’s owner.

He wrote a letter to John Fortmann — the top local IDOT official at the time — to “introduce” Fortmann to Safespeed and ask IDOT to approve the application. The need for such an introduction is unclear because, by then, Fortmann’s office for years had been working with Safespeed.

Records show another appeal came the very day the 2015 application was submitted to IDOT, from a more powerful senator: Martin Sandoval, D-Cicero.

Unlike Cullerton, Sandoval’s district didn’t include Oakbrook Terrace. Nor did Sandoval’s district include the Chicago headquarters of Safespeed. But Sandoval did chair the Senate Transportation Committee. And two months before Sandoval intervened, one of Safespeed’s owners cut Sandoval’s campaign a check for $5,000.

Records show Sandoval emailed Fortmann the pitch that Safespeed was making for the cameras. The senator told the IDOT administrator that the administrator’s “assistance would be appreciated.”

Fortmann, now retired, said he didn’t recall feeling pressure to approve the application, only to quickly vet it.

In a matter of months, Fortmann’s office rejected Oakbrook Terrace’s 2015 application. In a two-page letter, IDOT cited the intersection’s “low crash rates,” helped by the recent upgrades, while noting most crashes were rear-enders. It also wanted to wait until at least 2018 to see if recently installed brighter traffic signals would reduce crashes even more. IDOT told Oakbrook Terrace it could come back then.

Within days of the state issuing the letter, Sandoval phoned Fortmann about the rejection letter, records show.

Over the next two months, records show at least 15 staffers, including Fortmann and other top IDOT officials, were part of discussions about the Oakbrook Terrace intersection spread over at least 50 emails. In response to an open records request, IDOT released the emails to the Tribune, but the agency blacked out much of their content, again citing state law that allows some exemptions for internal governmental discussions.

The emails that were released showed Sandoval contacted Fortmann, and Fortmann told his peers that Sandoval brought up a Rauner administration proposal to add an extra toll lane to I-55 — known as the I-55 Managed Lanes Project — a proposal that, then and now, awaits legislative approval.

“He indicated that while unrelated he wants to work with the administration on other issues such as I55 Manage lanes (sic) but is not getting the type of cooperation on his issues that he would like to see,” Fortmann wrote to his peers.

In a recent interview, Fortmann told the Tribune that he didn’t recall writing that and, in general, didn’t feel Sandoval was threatening to withhold support of IDOT if it didn’t approve the Oakbrook Terrace camera permit.

Cullerton did not return phone calls or an email from the Tribune.

Sandoval declined to be interviewed, but in an emailed statement he noted the intersection was at one time considered among the most dangerous and that, in general, red light cameras boost safety.

“Obviously,” he said in the statement, “safety at the intersection would increase with cameras because as we have learned, the science is clear.”

But that wasn’t obvious to a top safety engineer at IDOT.

The reversal

Priscilla Tobias, director of IDOT’s office of program development, noted in emails to colleagues the intersection’s cameras likely wouldn’t reduce dangerous crashes, which were already low, and instead would boost rear-end crashes. She said she’d want to see if Safespeed’s study showed “deliberate/high speed violations or merely creepers clearing the intersection.”

The Tribune obtained the videos used in Safespeed’s study, and they showed nearly all alleged violations occurring within 1 second of a light turning red, as drivers followed others who had legally gone through the intersection. Reporters did not see any near crashes from any alleged violation.

IDOT would not identify which violations in the videos persuaded officials to reverse course, but those videos became the official reason IDOT changed its mind.

In the weeks after Tobias’ comments, with Safespeed and Sandoval pushing IDOT for an answer, IDOT wrote a new letter. This one was much shorter than the rejection letter, and it said the state decided the videos showed proof of “a pattern of (red light) violations” and therefore qualified the intersection for cameras.

The letter did not explain how IDOT’s view of the intersection evolved.

As for the senators’ appeals during the permit process, Tridgell, the IDOT spokesman, portrayed such interactions as routine.

“Elected officials on all levels of government reach out to the department frequently on a variety of matters related to transportation,” Tridgell wrote in an email. “The department does not consider this pressure.”

Fortmann retired in December and took a job at a local engineering consulting firm that works with IDOT. He said he couldn’t recall specifically who decided to allow cameras at the intersection: administrators in Springfield, the local IDOT district or a combination. But he defended it.

“I just know there are a lot of violations at that intersection,” he said. “To me, it wasn’t that controversial.”

That’s not how Oak Brook saw it.

Oak Brook had long fought the cameras, fearing they would drive away mall customers and hurt sales tax revenue. It amped up its fight.

That village’s police chief studied the intersection and described it as “tremendously safe.”

Then the suburb approved an ordinance banning red light cameras in Oak Brook. In it, the Village Board complained that red light firms have made roads less safe, not more, by seeking to “corrupt local law enforcement by turning it into a moneymaker for political leaders, who in turn have signed contracts granting substantial profits to red light contractors, who in turn have paid contributions to political decision makers.”

Records show Safespeed and its owners were among Oakbrook Terrace Mayor Tony Ragucci’s biggest donors over the years. And if the numbers in Safespeed’s study come true, the firm’s cut of the violation cash could approach $5 million a year just from that intersection.

Oak Brook alleged it was the victim of politics in a lawsuit it briefly pursued, then dropped, against its neighboring suburb, IDOT and Safespeed.

Ragucci declined to comment but has said publicly the cameras were about safety. So has Safespeed.

In a statement to the Tribune, Chris Lai, Safespeed’s chief operating officer, said if anybody was playing politics, it was Oak Brook.

“We, on behalf of our client, Oakbrook Terrace, simply appealed the decision, going through appropriate channels, all in a public and transparent way,” he wrote.

Safespeed, in court documents, dismissed Oak Brook’s complaint alleging ties between campaign contributions and IDOT’s permit approval.

But the red light camera company has since reaffirmed its support of Sandoval. In September 2016, it gave his campaign another $10,000 — the largest single donation the firm has given anyone, Illinois campaign records show. That same month, another $10,000 check arrived to Sandoval’s campaign fund from a firm owned by Safespeed owner Nikki Zollar.

And the Chicago area’s latest red light camera, at one of its busiest yet arguably safest intersections, started cranking out violations Aug. 1.

Early returns show that, in its first days, the cameras at Illinois 83 and 22nd Street averaged 200 violations a day. That’s the equivalent, per day, of $20,000 worth of tickets.

Pioneer Press reporter Chuck Fieldman contributed.

jmahr@chicagotribune.com

mwalberg@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @joemahr

Twitter @mattwalberg1