Red Light Camera Detection and License Plate Reader

My small  town (80,000) has relatively few road/street entries to it.  A river runs through it so do  major east/west and north/south highways.  To the immediate west is a mountain range with passes 60 to 100 miles apart.  A railroad line parallels the north/south highway with underpasses at two high traffic points carrying traffic entering the city.

If my city was a fortress it would be extremely well protected with a relatively few guards at entry points.  Like an old walled city in Europe.  It is not a fortress, entry is free, so is exit.  However, it can be very well protected by the placement of a few surveillance cameras at key vehicle entry points.  It can be and obviously it is.

There are 4 way surveillance cameras place at red light intersections at city entry/exit points.  Cameras look all ways, coming and going.

What do they see?  Record? and for what purpose?

Red light violations might be the most obvious.  But there is much more to see and record.  For example this is a city solicitation is for traffic surveillance for a turnkey red light and License Plate Reading system.

What kind of equipment is my city using, what vendor provided it?  How is it being used?  Who paid for it?  How much?  What are the ongoing operational cost?  What does it do?  What governmental agencies are related to these cameras?

Interesting questions?

Interesting challenge to find the answers.

While the Google hit blurb lists bend as a city using red light cameras, the printable list of Oregon cities using them does not include Bend. 

The city of Bend has TripCheck cameras on highway 97.  One is at the ramp of Wall and Revere looking east.

I could not find anything about traffic cameras at street intersections in Bend but a broader search of webcams in Bend produced this link to produced this link to EyeOnBend.  Info here about EyeOnBend and Michael Kellog, owner MK Consulting.

Trafficland is a major aggregator provider of traffic monitoring equipment and services.  Trafficland is a service provider to ODOT highway camera system.

Axis is associated with Trafficland.  Axis provides LPR cameras with this LPR ability at 900 feet.

Tripcheck provides revealing information about the Tripcheck/Trafficland system at this link.

Of particular interest is streaming traffic video currently available only in Portland.  The link states:

"ODOT does not save camera images. After an image is shown for its set duration it is then written over by the next camera image. Images are not archived due to the amount of resources it would take to save the thousands of images accumulated daily and to respect privacy concerns."

But the same link also states;

"The Oregon Department of Transportation allows businesses, private citizens and organizations to use data and images found on TripCheck. To begin collecting real time data users can sign up for a  TripCheck Travel Information Portal (TTIP) account. This information is formatted in Extensible Markup Language (XML) and it's suggested that users know XML as a pre-resiquite before signing up for a TTIP account. Go to this URL to sign up: http://www.tripcheck.com/TTIPv2"

"To get the address of any camera right click on the camera image. A menu will appear, scroll down and click on "Properties". The address or URL can be found and copied under "Properties". ODOT should be credited for use of the camera. Language such as "Camera courtesy of ODOT" is acceptable."