AUBURN -The secret locations of five Twin City red-light cameras won’t stay secret for long, Don Craig admits.

It’ll be obvious to drivers the first time the bright strobe light flashes behind them, just as they squeak through a red light.

“And then, they’ll get something in the mail, a week later, telling them they got caught,” Craig said.

But for now, transportation officials and consultants from Florida-based PEEK Traffic are keeping the locations under their hats.

“We’re testing the equipment, to see how it works,” said Craig, director of the Androscoggin Transportation Resource Center. “We want to see if the technology itself makes those intersections safer. It kind of needs to be secret to work.”

The first of five cameras went up last week, but Craig said it’s not operational yet. It still needs to be connected to phone lines and the Internet.

Craig said he expects all five cameras will be up at Twin City intersections and connected later this month.

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“But if we have the first one connected before the others are ready, you can be sure we’re going to start using it,” Craig said.

Cars entering an intersection under a red light and going faster than 12 mph will trigger the radar camera. The camera will take one picture just before a car enters the intersection, noting the car’s speed and the amount of time the light has been red.

“Studies show that if you are going faster than 12 mph, there’s no way you’re going to be able to stop for a red light,” Craig said.

The system takes a second picture less than a second later, when the red-light runner is in the middle of the intersection.

Company officials will download those photographs four or five times per day, removing bad or unclear photos or ones don’t show anyone breaking the law. The rest will be sent to the Auburn and Lewiston police, and officers will review each photograph.

“We still want the police to be the ones identifying lawbreakers,” Craig said. “Right now, an officer decides whether or not to issue a ticket after they’ve pulled you over. We don’t want to change that.”

Police will put in the address of the owner of the car, based the photograph of the license plate and mail a warning to the owner.

“We’re not doing citations or tickets or requiring people to pay a fine,” Craig said. “Right now, we’re just doing warnings.”

Craig said the group will also be collecting data to see if the cameras convince people to stop. They brought in engineers from the University of Maine to study each intersection, looking over police reports and counting cars that ran red lights.

“We have six months to see if they have an effect, and that puts us into May,” Craig said. “We get to see how the system works over winter, in the snow and in the spring.”