NEW YORK — The city finished its red light camera rollout this week, and folks, I want you to know that 600 intersections are now safer, and 12,900 intersections are now jealous.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Department of Transportation announced Wednesday that cameras are up at 600 intersections across the five boroughs, quadrupling the old network of 150. That's the most state law allows. The mayor, the commissioner and the advocates all said so, the way a fella at the diner tells you he'd have a third slice of pie if the waitress would let him.

Each camera mails a $50 ticket to whoever owns the car.

Now, I'm not here to defend running red lights. My Uncle Del ran one in 1987 and has been telling the story at Thanksgiving ever since. The DOT says red light running has dropped more than 80% at camera locations, with T-bone injuries down 70% and rear-end injuries down 60%. That's real. Nobody at my booth is arguing with the T-bone numbers.

But here's where the coffee gets bitter.

The Department of Finance says the city collected $43 million from red light tickets last fiscal year, up about 36% from the year before. That was before the 450 new cameras were even counting.

So the cameras cut red light running by 80%, and the money went up 36%. In my town we call that a church raffle where the prize keeps getting smaller and the tickets keep getting more expensive.

And who's paying? DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn says 95% of drivers caught last year got just one or two tickets. So almost everybody learns the lesson after fifty bucks, and the city still cleared $43 million. That's not a safety program. That's a tuition plan, and every driver in the five boroughs is enrolled.

Drivers told the New York Post they've been squeezed down to one lane by bike lanes, then cut off by cyclists and e-bike riders who blow the same red lights with no plate for the camera to read. One fella pumping gas on 14th Street said the bikes have "no rules." Another fella who drives to work every day asked the question every city council in America dreads: "How much money does the city need anyways?"

Friend, I've been asking that at budget hearings since the Carter administration. Nobody has ever answered.

The DOT says drivers who enter the intersection before the light turns red shouldn't get a ticket, and that human reviewers look at every image before it goes out. Which means somewhere in the city there's an office of people whose whole job is watching you not quite make it.

And the politicians are just getting warmed up. Assembly Member Diana Moreno, who stood at the Astoria press conference, said, "This is only the beginning," and wants Albany to approve cameras at even more intersections. Albany also has to reauthorize the cameras the city already has next year.

Only the beginning. At this rate, the only intersection in New York without a camera will be the one between a driver's paycheck and the Department of Finance. That one has no light at all. Money just goes straight through.

So the city is safer, the drivers are poorer, and the bikes are still freewheeling past it all like the kid who never got caught.

Six hundred cameras done. Twelve thousand nine hundred intersections left. And not one of them will ever be as jealous as the city's accountants are of next year.

This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.

The real story that inspired this