EDGEWATER — The red-light camera at Hollywood Avenue and Sheridan Road — the northern-most entrance to Lake Shore Drive and one of the neighborhood's busiest intersections — is here to stay.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel had announced plans last month to remove the camera and 17 others throughout the city after data showed a reduction in crashes at the intersections.
But Ald. Harry Osterman (48th) had said he was "very concerned" with the plan to remove it, citing the up to 70,000 cars traveling daily through the intersection that also is used heavily by pedestrians.
In 2012, the camera at Hollywood and Sheridan issued 3,833 tickets at $100 each, according to an audit issued earlier this year by the city's Inspector General's Office, while the camera at Cicero Avenue and Interstate 55 led the city in tickets with 19,805.
Dan Luna, Osterman's chief of staff, said it received a letter Wednesday from the Chicago Department of Transportation saying it would abandon its plan to remove the camera.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the other cameras would stay in place. A request for comment to the mayor's office wasn't immediately answered.
The mayor had said, however, that the intersections saw no right-angle crashes and showed less than 1 percent of cars traveling through the intersections were involved in a crash, according to Chicago Department of Transportation data.
Sheli Lulkin, president of a condo-owner coalition along North Sheridan Road, had said she didn't want to see the camera go.
"I think that’s why the accidents aren’t happening," she said. "Especially the people going east,
they slow down and we’ve had less accidents."
