By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune
Want speed cameras proliferating on your suburban roads?
Chicago-style speed cameras could be coming to a suburb near you thanks to a bill that’s still alive ahead of the April 11 third-reading deadline in Springfield. Today, cameras are allowed only in municipalities with populations over 1 million — which, in Illinois, means Chicago. If this new bill advances, it would authorize home-rule municipalities with populations over 35,000 in counties with more than 3 million people to install speed cameras.
Translation: Speed cameras could be coming to suburban Cook County, the only place in the state with municipalities that fit these requirements.
Red-light cameras are already a reality of life in some parts of the suburbs. From south suburban Homewood to northwest suburban Rolling Meadows, more towns are raising money from these cameras, plaguing drivers just trying to get to work, run errands or shuttle kids to activities.
Des Plaines operates red-light cameras at the busy intersection of Golf and Rand roads that issued 7,885 tickets last year, totaling $320,000.
Other suburbs leverage red-light cameras, too, including Hoffman Estates, also in the northwest suburbs.
Read more here.