OPINION:
If you’ve noticed a recent jump in the number of red-light and speed cameras on local roads, it’s not your imagination. Automated ticketing machines have been spreading faster than a Canadian wildfire, courtesy of the administration and Congress.
Two years ago, an enterprising House member sneaked a single line into a sprawling transportation bill setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars to states willing to replace their traffic cops with robotic machines. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg loved the idea so much that he pledged to spend your money to deploy the ticket cameras nationwide.
This set off a race between the states to be first in line to grab that cash.
In April, the ordinarily sensible governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, inexplicably signed legislation repealing her state’s ban on dispensing traffic citations through the mail. Indiana passed a similar law in May.
No sooner had Virginia repealed its prohibition on speed cameras than Fairfax County hit the accelerator, and now the first 10 cameras are dishing out tickets to drivers. Alexandria has five cameras of its own scheduled to begin flashing soon.
The cover story is that these are just “pilot projects” to “save the children” in school zones and “protect workers” in work zones. But like every government program, this scheme is designed to stick around forever with a true purpose revealed through a careful review of budgetary documents.
In Alexandria, for example, the City Council expects the annual profit from issuing traffic fines to rise from $2,694,652 in fiscal 2022 to $4,425,000 after the cameras go live. That’s an impressive 64% jump, but it’s a safe assumption that safety won’t be enhanced by nearly two-thirds.
More accurately, it’s not an assumption at all. Reliance on cameras for revenue destroys any incentive for cities to try engineering to solve traffic safety problems.
Last month, the city of Phoenix released the results of a field study evaluating the impact of increasing the duration of yellow warning times at traffic signals. Longer yellows have long been touted as an effective alternative to red-light cameras. It worked.
“For all the treatment sites for the through and left-turn movements, the average rate of [red-light running] significantly decreased,” the study concluded.
In fact, the problem decreased by as much as 60% thanks to the extra half a second or so drivers had to stop. Phoenix officials endorsed the results by voting to extend yellow times at traffic signals citywide.
The District of Columbia, by contrast, has no interest in proper engineering. Motorists now face the prospect of receiving automated tickets on major thoroughfares where the speed limit was arbitrarily cut to just 25 mph.
Combined with the deployment of 122 more speed cameras, 140 more cameras to enforce bus lane restrictions and 80 extra cameras enforcing stop signs, the city is eyeing “$578 [million] in anticipated Automated Traffic Enforcement revenue from new cameras approved in FY 2022 and FY 2023.”
District officials had to hire 38 new full-time citation processing staffers just to count the loot.
That’s why spending federal taxpayer dollars on these schemes is so insidious. The programs are turnkey operations run by private vendors at a massive profit.
The extra federal cash is just a giveaway to profligate cities, states and sketchy vendors.
Congress should repeal the speed camera provision in the next budgetary cycle.
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