In a 6 to 3 vote by City Council, legislation was passed to end the red light camera program in the city of Rochester.
Many said the location of the cameras being in neighborhoods with high poverty rates wasn’t fair - including City Council President Loretta Scott.
“I'm not saying poor people shouldn't pay their tickets, don’t misunderstand me. If you get a ticket you should pay it. But you shouldn’t have an increased likelihood of getting a ticket. And the impact of it when that happens can set your life off the rails because of an already fragile financial situation."
Mayor Lovely Warren agreed, saying the program didn’t work on a large scale.
"In this case this was a program that disproportionately effected city residents, the poorest of city residents, but on top of that was not something that we could justify being solely a safety program."
Councilman Michael Patterson also voted in favor of ending the program, but said the city still has a bigger traffic problem to deal with.
"We have a ton of people who go through stop signs without hesitation, who drive around busses, we have a traffic management problem in this city that we need to deal with, and red light cameras are not solving those problems."
Warren said the city was getting between $800,000 and $1 million a year in revenue from the program, but that the loss won’t significantly impact the city's budget.
She also reminded drivers that even though the cameras will go dark on December 31st, standard traffic laws are still in effect.
"The law is that you cannot run a red light, you can’t do a rolling red stop and turn right on red, you just can’t do it. That wasn’t legal before we instituted this program, it’s not legal after."