Pittsburgh Councilman Bill Peduto wants to improve the safety and flow of city traffic with such measures as improving the system of lights and making intersections less dangerous. He introduced his Safe Streets Initiative last Tuesday, and council could discuss and vote on it today.

But there's a problem: The city doesn't have the money to make needed improvements. There's also a possible solution, if Pittsburghers are in the mood for some creative if controversial thinking.

As part of the Peduto plan, drivers who run red lights at intersections would receive an unpleasant souvenir: a $100 ticket in the mail. The plan, which would need the approval of the Legislature, calls for a company to install cameras at hazardous intersections that would record the license plates of drivers running red lights.

Although Mr. Peduto risks unpopularity, his motivation to cut traffic accidents and injuries deserves respect. The idea came from discussions he had with a Carnegie Mellon University professor about the death of a student who was struck by a vehicle while crossing Forbes Avenue in April.

Other cities including Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and some in other countries have installed such cameras. A Philadelphia official told the Post-Gazette that the system had proved very successful, decreasing the number of violations at intersections by as much as 80 percent.

The beauty of the system is that it would pay for itself and more. Mr. Peduto believes it could raise millions of dollars, enough to fund the other safety improvements he would like to see. A company would install the cameras and receive a monthly retainer.

Of course, the question for Pittsburghers is how much surveillance in public places they can stand. Still, in a hyper security-conscious age, when Americans are routinely being observed by cameras in all sorts of places, from inside stores to outside ATM machines, cameras at a few major intersections will hardly be the all-seeing eye of Sauron.

Practical considerations need to be considered, too. The system ought to be set up so that only drivers who enter an intersection on red would be penalized, not those who have a yellow light turn red when they are exiting.

Council should approve Mr. Peduto's plan for at least a trial. There's nothing to be lost in trying and much to be gained if it proves in practice less controversial than imagined.