Color us seriously curious regarding the news that the closed (and originally taxpayer-subsidized) Salem’s Market has reached an agreement to sell the store to the Macedonia Church of Pittsburgh.
Few details of the deal are being made public, given that all the legal niceties are being finalized. No one’s saying what the purchase price might be. But there is speculation that the church would hire some kind of management company to run the grocery that, under the Salem’s banner, lasted for only a year.
You’ll recall the site previously housed the also taxpayer-subsidized Shop ‘n Save, which was a similar (and predictable) spectacular failure.
Of course, that’s what usually happens when government attempts to command a marketplace, one that it typically misreads.
And, past being prologue, not only did neither iteration of the grocery store generate enough foot traffic to sustain their full-service offerings, both stores also were being robbed blind – retail theft was a major problem, observers say.
Macedonia officials say they plan to keep the grocery store a full-service operation. How it expects to do that, given the situation in the aisles – too few feet walking them but too much product being pilfered from them – remains a major question mark.
Another big question mark is if there’s going to be any more public money thrown into this twice-failed exercise in government-as-grocer.
Simply put, there mustn’t be. But if there is Episode Three of “Throwing Good Money After Bad,” it must be stridently called out for the rank ignorance and gross misuse of public dollars it represents.
Speaking of rank ignorance and gross misuse of public dollars, Pittsburgh City Council is proceeding with a plan first hatched last year to install cameras to catch red-light runners.
Legislation was introduced last week to contract with Verra Mobility of Arizona to begin placing the cameras, the first batch of which are to be operational this winter.
“The proposed deal … would cost nearly $14 million over a five-year contract,” reports the Tribune-Review. “But the city can recoup the costs with revenue generated from the tickets people will have to pay when the system catches them cruising through red lights.”
Sounds like a plan – a plan ripe for abuse.
Pittsburgh officials insist the cameras will reduce dangerous driving and curb fatal crashes. But that is the buncombe of the blatherskites.
A 2008 study published in the University of South Florida’s “Florida Public Health Review” concluded that red-light cameras not only made intersections less safe than doing nothing at all but that they are little more than revenue generators.
The study’s lead author – Barbara Langland-Orban, chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health – says “rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work.”
“Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs,” she said.
Additionally, the researchers found red-light running crashes were declining without the use of cameras and that comprehensive studies from North Carolina, Virginia and Ontario (conducted by the Virginia Transportation Research Council) found that red-light cameras were significantly associated with increases in crashes, as well as crashes involving injuries.
And studies that claim otherwise, Langland-Orbin said, contained “research design flaws” and were funded by conflicted parties. The bottom line is that the preponderance of credible research into the efficacy of red-light cameras shows they are inefficacious.
Pittsburgh City Council should know better. But then again, Pittsburgh City Council seldom does.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
