They tried that for a few years. People went to court to challenge them, overwhelmed the court system, and made it not cost effective to pursue people.
Where they winning cases on merit or just so many cases filled that the court could not process the number of cases? I would be interested to read up on that if you had something on that.
I know of a situation where a municipality had not done the required traffic survey to justify the speed limit. In that case, if challenged in court, tickets get dismissed. One individual knew the law, was constantly cited, kept going to court to get the tickets dismissed. Eventually the individual filed a RICO suit against the government that forced them to do the traffic study, which resulted in the speed limit being raised.
I think most people who challenged lost, but it didn't stop them from trying... Regardless, the courts weren't getting the money from the fines, at least not enough to compensate for the amount of time people took up.
This reads as a classic project management failure. Lack of stakeholder engagement impacting the forecasting of requirements, leading to insufficient resources allocated, human and material. Lack of training prior to rollout. Inadequate quality control mechanisms relating to vendor performance. Poor monitoring post implementation leading to slow corrective actions. All of the above led to inefficiencies causing costs to exceed revenues.
Self sustaining budget was a secondary goal. The paper does not delve into the stated primary goal, increased safety. Were speeds and or accidents reduced. If accidents were reduced, were costs related to emergency services and infrastructure repair also reduced. What was the total impact to municipalities budget, not just the judicial system.