Metro police camera revenues crash

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(Greg Whitesell/Examiner)
A red-light camera monitors violators on Wisconsin Avenue. D.C. traffic cameras nabbed roughly 250,000 fewer violators than the previous year.

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Revenues from the Metropolitan Police Department photo radar and red light programs collapsed by nearly $25 million last year, as the cameras nabbed roughly 250,000 fewer violators than the previous year.

The camera program must be working, police contend. “Generally speaking, the reason for the decline is that people are slowing down,” said Traci Hughes, the department’s spokeswoman.

According to statistics provided by Mayor Adrian Fenty’s office, 63,402 drivers were caught by cameras running red lights in fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, compared with 80,475 in fiscal 2006. The numbers for photo radar were more dramatic — 340,454 speeding tickets in fiscal 2007 compared with 582,717 in 2006.

The drop-off means significantly less revenue for the District’s coffers. Photo radar generated $31 million in 2007, $22 million less than the year before. Photo red light generated $6.4 million in 2007 compared with $8.5 million in 2006.

Although automated tickets fell, officer-generated tickets did not. MPD officers issued about the same number of tickets for moving violations between 2006 and 2007, 103,231 to 102,627, respectively. Ticket revenue for those officer-issued citations, however, fell by $1.4 million.

“We’ve got cruisers in place and police officers patrolling, and when they see them, they get them,” Hughes said. “It’s a lesson learned. Just because they’re slowing down in the range of the cameras doesn’t mean they can speed up in the rest of the city.”

The District operates 49 red-light cameras and about 25 radar cameras, some in fixed locations and others attached to cruisers.

Although $31 million in fines remains a “huge amount of money,” drivers appear to be slowing down in the area of cameras, said Lon Anderson, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which has long criticized D.C.’s use of photo radar as a money grab. Motorists, he said, “are getting the message.”

But the cameras have an ancillary impact, Anderson added, what AAA calls the “halo effect.” Drivers on 16th Street NW near Carter Barron, for example, slow down to 25 mph within a block of the fixed-location radar camera. Then they speed up again.

“The halo effect is half a block,” Anderson said. “A few hundred feet on either side, [the camera] changes people’s behavior.”

mneibauer@dcexaminer.com

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