SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — After being taken down in January, new red light cameras are going up at several intersections across San Francisco.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has been working on this project since 2014.

At Park Presidio and Lake Street, the old green box cameras are still up, but they’re inactive. By this summer though, the intersection along with 12 others across the city will have new functioning digital red light cameras.

The MTA says it’s been a long time coming Red means stop — and that’s exactly what the MTA is hoping drivers do, especially at 13 intersections where they’ve chosen to install new red light cameras

“We find that a significant portion of injury traffic collisions in San Francisco is due to people running red lights, and this is one tool to help address that,” said a spokesperson with the MTA.

“I know a lot of people tend to run red lights especially when they’re in a hurry, but that can be extremely dangerous for a lot of people,” said San Francisco resident Suzy Wells.

Wells lives near 4th street and harrison in SOMA. It’s the only intersection right now fully equipped with the new digital cameras.

“At a junction like this where there’s a lot of crosswalks and it’s a highway entrance,” she said. “I think it’s kind of useful to have.”

“Traffic collisions related to red light running have decreased by 66% since we installed these cameras in 1996,” said MTA spokesperson Paul Rose.

Rose says since then, the city has continued to review collision rates, and has added or deleted cameras where they see fit.

“We look at every other measure, we try to install every other measure at these intersections before we install a red light camera,” he said. “So these are just one tool in our toolbox to help prevent injury collisions and doing everything we can to get to our goals of vision zero to eliminate traffic fatalities by the year 2024.”

The only intersection active right now is at Harrison and Fourth Street in SOMA. The other 12 are expected to be up and running sometime this summer.

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