Montgomery County’s traffic camera program nabbed nearly 180,000 speeders in the first nine months of the program, and officials expect the project to rake in even more in its second year.

Montgomery is the first jurisdiction in Maryland authorized to deploy speed cameras. The program is used on residential streets with speed limits up to 35 mph and in school zones — $40 tickets are issued for vehicles traveling at least 10 miles over the speed limit.

As of February 2008, there were 22 fixed cameras at locations throughout the county and mobile units rotating between 60 other sites.  Between their installation in May of 2007 and February of this year, the cameras caught 178,000 speeders in the act.

County officials projected it would cost roughly $5 million for the “Safe Speed” program to operate between July 2007 and June 2008,  by the end of February, the program had brought back $5.2 million.

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Budget officials expect the program to generate $10.5 million in revenue between July 2008 and June 2009. Per state law, any money made through the program goes to fund new local public safety expenditures, such as pedestrian

safety initiatives.

A study done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety six months before and six months after the speed camera program began found that the average speed of vehicles at five camera-monitored sites dropped from 42 to 38 miles per hour. In 15 places where signs warned “Photo Enforced” but no cameras were deployed, average speed dropped from 39 to 37 miles per hour, and in 10 other Montgomery County locations without signs or cameras, average speed dropped from 43 to 41 miles per hour. 

“The deterrent effect is more general than just where the cameras are,” Montgomery County Council Vice President Phil Andrews said. “We’re seeing a decline in speeding where we have cameras and where we don’t have cameras, which is very encouraging because the whole goal of this program is to change unsafe driver behavior.”

Richard Retting, a Senior Transportation Engineer who led the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s review of Montgomery County’s program, said his organization has also reviewed speed camera systems in the District and Scottsdale, Ariz.

“All three areas though had one thing in common: a dramatic reduction in speeding once these programs took effect,” Retting said. “Drivers don’t like to get tickets. This is a very simple concept. When you put teeth behind the law, you get results.”

kmiller@dcexaminer.com