hill,a few interesting twists and turns to this, all I believe...

hill,
a few interesting twists and turns to this, all I believe favourable to Redflex.

firstly when I have time I will make sure of this but I think Vista and most of the recent wins in California before 31/12 last year are per citation issued, not per citation paid thus Redflex gets paid for every citation issued and does not cop the non payers.

Secondly I believe that the Vista police initially at least will choose to only issue citations to blatant offenders, most of those infringements sent by Redflex to the city probably were suitable for citations but the most dangerous ones would be the 20mph+ ones. Having dedicated RLC systems doing only right turn infringements is breaking new ground in California, to my knowledge no one else is doing it thus the police probably are right to adopt a softly softly approach initially.
Thirdly being California a face shot is needed in Vista besides the other shots, there has to be a bit of fine tuning required to catch a clear face shot for every infringement, particularly the very fast 20mph+ turns. Sioux Falls in South Dakota is different, no face shot required thus much easier.
Actually because of the face shot requirement, even on the straight through systems, Redflex has had California almost to itself for the last year, no one else seems to be able to do it effectively.
Fourthly, is their budget understated? Almost certainly although they want to be very conservative, I would guess they are budgetting around $4,500 per approach average across all their systems, I would guess actual would have to be $6,000+, even that last renewal at El Cajon was $6,300 a month, as you know any new contracts or renewals in California after 1/1/04 must be fixed amount per month.