Posts about Traffic Cameras

Kojo Nnamdi: Speaking of crowds, there seem to be a lot of crowds driving down K Street Northwest at rapid speeds or going through traffic lights because one camera on K Street Northwest has brought in more than $8 million into the District of Columbia's coffers during the course of the current fiscal year.

There was a camera on New York Avenue that used to come in first, but apparently, that has been surpassed by the camera on K Street. But we have to say that the District of Columbia government said, "This is not about the revenue. This is not about the money. This is about controlling traffic. The money means nothing to us."

Tom Sherwood: You know, I hear the skepticism in your voice. I hear the derision, the...

Kojo Nnamdi: Nothing.

Tom Sherwood: Well, let me say this, that's—the Post story—I was irritated by the Post story. I think there's a story there about how the city is doing camera money, but to say that the city is getting a windfall from that one camera, ... [crosstalk deleted]

I was irritated the way other people play this story. On that K Street, the 2200 block or whatever it is, the cameras there, about 32,000 cars, vehicles go through there each day. The camera gives out about 300 tickets. Now, just math-wise, I think that's maybe 1 percent of the cars. The amount of money the city gets from ticket revenue is one-half of 1 percent of the city's entire budget.

And the Post story also didn't point out that since the city has been using speed cameras because citizens who live there, there's a hospital over there, there are senior citizens, there are families with children, they don't want those commuters rushing to get up onto the freeway going over into Virginia or in coming back. Since 2001, fatalities on the streets of the city from vehicular accidents has dropped 76 percent in part, Chief Lanier says, because we have speed cameras. Now, I can go on, but I think the point is made. There's ...

Kojo Nnamdi: Mayor Sherwood has spoken.

Tom Sherwood: So, yes, you know, if—I don't know that 25 miles an hour is the right speed limit for that tunnel. I think probably it sounds low. But if you move it up to 30 or 35, then you can only write a ticket for someone going 45, and then you're getting up close to 50. So, anyway, that's the issue. It's more than just the city taking in money. It's not raking in money. It's not squeezing people unfairly. No one says the cameras don't operate correctly. And as Chief Lanier always says, you can't get a ticket if you're not speeding.

[Crosstalk deleted]

Kojo Nnamdi: It's just that to the average person, $8 million does seem like a lot of money. But moving on...

Tom Sherwood: Maybe.

To lower the fines cost money, and the Council didn't find enough money to lower all speed fines. Instead, the fine for speeding 11-15 mph over the limit only dropped from $100 to $92. It would have made more sense to use the limited funds to drop the lower-speed fines first instead of the higher-speed ones, but that's not what happened.

They also only allocated money in the current fiscal year. Unless this budget said otherwise, the fines would have automatically jumped back up on October 1. Mayor Gray indeed allocated money to keep many of the lower fines, including ones for infractions besides speeding.

However, the administration proposes to set the fine for 11-15 mph and 16-20 mph over both at $100, said budget director Eric Goulet, and also raise the fine for speeding over 20 mph to $250 $200 and over 25 mph to $300. This is actually the same fine schedule Gray previously proposed when the Council was debating lowering fines.

Fines for running red lights did not go down in the last bill. That's in part because AAA's John Townsend actually argued in the task force for maintaining higher red light fines, though he's since started spewing press releases complaining about them, despite his earlier stance.

Here is a table of the old fines, what Cheh and Wells proposed, what passed in the final bill both as the authorized level and the actual level that got funding, and what Gray is proposing for 2014.

The Budget Support Act is not yet available, so all of the information here is based on my conversation with Goulet, and I am checking to confirm their proposal for the never-enforced 1-10 mph violation and whether not yielding to a pedestrian is $50 or $75. I will update the post when that is available. Update: After talking to Goulet, I have updated the table and added a row for speeding 26-30 mph, whose fine will be rising from $250 to $300 as well.

I originally pushed for even lower fines from cameras, on the logic that the fine should just be high enough to deter speeding or other behaviors, and that it could buy peace. Unfortunately, we really don't have good evidence about what deters speeding. Also, AAA has stepped up the pace of camera complaints and attack press releases, so it's become clear that there's no partner for peace over there.

Therefore, Gray's proposal is a reasonable position. It keeps some of the formerly most egregious fines down and should deter some of the most reckless behavior.

It's not waging any kind of "war on drivers," but if AAA is going to claim there is one even after DC leaders make a good faith effort to address the group's concerns, DC may as well prioritize making neighborhoods safe for residents by adding cameras and maintaining fines.

Segraves got data from DC, Montgomery, and Prince George's about the percentage of drivers who get multiple tickets, out of all the drivers who get a ticket from the cameras. Ticketed drivers are twice as likely to have multiple tickets in the Maryland counties, and 20 times as likely to have 5 or 10 tickets.

What would cause this discrepancy?

This could be because the fines were much higher in DC in Maryland (they decreased in DC thanks the last year's camera bill). It could be that the lower fines mean people are less worried about getting caught. Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker thinks that's true. Anecdotally, I've heard from other drivers who say they're much more afraid of speeding in DC.

It also could be that different groups of drivers get tickets in each jurisdiction. John Townsend of AAA (who can sound entirely reasonable when he tries) thinks that the Maryland cameras are in neighborhoods where the same drivers ply the roads day after day. A possible counter-argument is that drivers who live nearby know where the cameras are, so they shouldn't get tickets.

Another possibility is that DC gets more tourists, who come in, speed, get a ticket, and then aren't around to get more. Martin Austermuhle muses that perhaps Maryland drivers are just worse.

One way to better analyze these possibilities would be to break the data down by state. Are DC drivers re-offending at the same rate on DC cameras as Maryland drivers on Maryland cameras? Are Maryland drivers (most of whom do commute) getting more or fewer tickets on DC cameras than the DC drivers do?

Or, to investigate Townsend's claim, what about just the DC cameras that are in neighborhoods? AAA mostly complains about the ones on freeways, but the most serious safety problems are where major streets cut through neighborhoods. Do people get multiple tickets at higher rates on those DC cameras?

Was it wise to lower fines?

The task force Councilmembers Tommy Wells (ward 6) and Mary Cheh (ward 3) put together couldn't find convincing evidence one way or the other, so the councilmembers decided to lower the fines because of the political blowback. I argued at the time that AAA is orchestrating a lot of that blowback, so if they want to trade peace for lower fines, they'll have to follow through.

Townsend hasn't. Instead, they've sent out a stream of press releases attacking the cameras, and given lots of juicy quotes to the press. He's called cameras "the mother's milk of additional revenue" for government, even though DC lowered the fines.

Townsend even complained about red light cameras after arguing in the task force for keeping the fines high. He told Ashley Halsey III, "The District collects nearly two-thirds, a stunning 61.6 percent, of the [red-light camera] revenue total for the national capital area."

Let's debate the actual safety, not the fake anti-government frame

Maybe cameras won't work. Mount Pleasant ANC Commissioner Jack McKay doesn't think they do. MPD does, but doesn't have good enough data to really prove it. It would be great to have a real debate about what measures will and won't make streets safer.

That's not the debate we are having, however. Instead, AAA is using misdirection. They aren't saying the measures don't improve safety; they are saying the whole thing is a government conspiracy to squeeze money out of drivers. And the non-revenue elements like bike lanes are a "war on drivers" and an attempt to force people out of cars.

This is a pernicious theme because it plays right into the press's existing biases to cover stories as government vs. the people. AAA doesn't want to talk about the people who get hurt from drivers turning right without stopping; they want everyone to blame the evil gummint.

For some reason which escapes me, most reporters seem to eat it up. Halsey led off his story with the extremely biased line, "The lucrative battle to keep drivers in the District from running red lights seems to be achieving more profit than success." It's amazing that there had to be a letter to the editor to point out that illegal driving is more than a revenue issue, it's a safety issue.

Let's look at that success, seriously. A debate about the cameras based on safety would be welcome. There are plenty of angles for reporters to investigate that relate to the actual safety, or the appropriate level of fines. Mark Segraves has taken one step toward that. Will others follow?

In a post entitled "Prosecutor as bully," Lessig wrote:

If what the government alleged was true ... then what [Aaron] did was wrong. ... But all this shows is that if the government proved its case, some punishment was appropriate. So what was that appropriate punishment? ... Our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed. ...

From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. ... I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don't get both, you don't deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.

For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House—and where even those brought to "justice" never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled "felons."

Drivers who behave recklessly and kill pedestrians and cyclists usually face little punishment unless they are drunk or flee. When a driver was caught on tape assaulting a cyclist, authorities didn't press charges. After police worked hard to investigate a driver who was allegedly on his cell phone when he hit and killed a senior crossing the street, prosecutors brought charges, but a grand jury refused to indict.

Meanwhile, our punishments for some transgressions often go far beyond what's appropriate or what is necessary to stop crime, like suspending students for taking their prescription medication without proper paperwork or a 6-year-old for making a gun shape with a hand.

Even for violent crimes, which we absolutely must vehemently combat, prison terms often far exceed what's necessary or effective. In his most recent column, David Brooks wrote:

If you want to deter crime, it seems that you'd want to lengthen prison sentences so that criminals would face steeper costs for breaking the law. In fact, a mountain of research shows that increases in prison terms have done nothing to deter crime. Criminals, like the rest of us, aren't much influenced by things they might have to experience far in the future.

Based on this logic, our local government just passed a bill to relieve punitive burdens on drivers who speed. It made sense not to charge punitively high fees on speeders, since the primary objective must be safety rather than revenue. (Unfortunately, Phil Mendelson, who never participated in the task force that pored over research and debated options, then rewrote or deleted most of the key provisions in the bill that would increase certainty, and added new sections that will reduce safety in other ways.)

Now we've applied the certainty-over-severity analysis, or at least the less-severity half, to an area of crime that has a politically powerful constituency—drivers—behind it. Will the council now do the same for other areas of our criminal justice?

Unlike speeding, injustices in the way we prosecute drug laws or the "school to prison pipeline" disproportionately affect poorer and minority communities that have less political clout. The families who suffer from over-incarceration are less likely to be the ones having lunch with a councilmember than the business leader who might complain about some speeding tickets.

Will Wells try to fix laws that over-punish some people to little end, and under-punish others who today don't face any consequences for serious transgressions? Will the rest of the council agree to such measures?

It's not possible to devise a perfectly fair criminal justice system. Some people will get away with serious malfeasance while others suffer excessively. What we can do, both nationally by recalibrating our response to journal article downloading versus financial fraud, or locally in our response to speeding versus shooting transgendered people, is push for more proportionality where possible. There's a lot of work to do.

(a) By November 1, 2013, the Mayor shall complete a District-wide assessment that evaluates the speed limits on the District's arterials and other streets. The report of the assessment shall include the criteria used for assessing the speed limits. Upon its completion, the assessment shall be posted to the District Department of Transportation's website. The assessment shall:

• (1) Utilize factors common among transportation officials for the determination of speed limit;
  
• (2) Evaluate whether comparable arterials should have comparable speed limits, and similarly do so for other streets;
  
• (3) Include, based solely on an engineering perspective, speed limits for the District's arterials and other streets.

(b) By January 1, 2014, the Mayor shall revise, through rulemaking, existing speed limits throughout the District. The speed limits shall include comparable speeds for comparable arterials, and other comparable streets. Notwithstanding this requirement, the Mayor shall not cause an anti-deficiency as determined by a fiscal impact statement obtained by the Mayor from the Chief Financial Officer.

Mendelson apparently is trying to ensure that speed limits get set without regard for revenue or politics, and fairly between different arterials in various parts of the city.

Those are good instincts, but requiring an "engineering perspective" for speed limits is the wrong approach. The traffic engineering profession has a deeply ingrained practice of setting speed limits solely for car traffic, and with the motivation of making roads move traffic as fast as possible for the safety of drivers.

They traditionally use a simple "80% rule": Set the limit at the rate that 80% of drivers move on a particular road. The idea is that some people are speeding, but if most people travel at a particular rate, that rate is probably safe. And on a limited-access highway, that's not a terrible idea, because there is only one kind of road user (maybe two, if motorcycles are separate).

But our neighborhood streets, including arterials, have to balance the needs of many modes. 80% of drivers gives no thought whatsoever to the speed that will allow people to cross the street at unsignalized intersections (where it's legal) without the danger that a driver won't come around a curve so fast that they can't see the pedestrian or stop in time. It doesn't consider the traffic flow that would allow bicyclists and drivers to coexist safely and efficiently.

The "engineering perspective" doesn't have to ignore these factors; engineers could easily devise another algorithm that is better. But they generally haven't, and the guy in charge of speed limits for DDOT, James Cheeks, personally wrote a whitepaper when he worked for the Institute of Transportation Engineers advocating for the 80% rule.

That document says the 80% rule is "a case of majority rule." Actually, we often don't set laws just based on majority rule. We protect vulnerable minority groups and have legal processes to ensure majorities don't trample their needs. On the roads, motorists are the majority but pedestrians and cyclists are a vulnerable minority we need to protect.

At the task force meetings, Cheeks reiterated that the 80% rule was his preferred way to set speed limits, but when pushed, also added that DDOT always talks to residents and also thinks about pedestrian and bicycle safety. My fear is that the "engineering perspective" in Mendelson's provision will specifically push DDOT to follow the dangerous method in this whitepaper, which specifically comes from engineers, and not to incorporate other needs or listen to communities.

ANC 3E wants escalating fines

The Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Tenleytown, AU Park and Friendship Heights, ANC 3E, asked the Council to turn down the bill entirely, saying, "We believe the stated basis for enacting the Bill does not support the Bill's passage. Without material changes, we believe the Bill would fail adequately deter repeat offenders and lead to unnecessary deaths and injuries."

The ANC primarily is concerned that repeat offenders will get off easy for ignoring the laws time and again. The task force originally supported having some system that would give first offenders lower penalties, and chronic repeat offenders higher ones. The original bill also prescribed much higher fines for higher levels of speeding on the belief that traveling 20-30 mph over the limit is act much more intentionally flouting the law than speeding 11 mph over.

The ANC's resolution states:

ANC 3E believes the current fine regime, which per the legislative history puts DC near the middle of state fine regimes, is not unduly harsh. Evidence is strong that speed cameras save lives in DC. By contrast, the evidence is weak that higher fines do not promote more safety, as economic theory predicts, or that a majority of DC residents want to see fines lowered.

Whether or not the Council chooses to reduce some fines, however, we strenuously urge the Council to establish a system of fines for moving violations that escalates after a set number of offenses of a given severity. The escalation scheme should parallel the point system for violations in a police officer's presence. Thus, an owner whose vehicle is ticketed three times in a two year period for driving 16 mph over the limit should receive a fine on the third offense whose magnitude would be akin to the magnitude of license suspension for a 6+ months. Although we do not formally recommend such a sum, we believe that it should be at least $500.

If the Council does not amend the Bill to create such an escalating scheme, we respectfully urge the Mayor to veto it, and respectfully urge the Council to reconsider creating such a scheme.

Update: Tina pointed out that this gem of a video is very relevant here. Everyone who thinks that the same old "engineering perspective" is the right way to make traffic decisions needs to see this.

Contractor parking bill takes the right approach

The contractor parking bill (committee report) will let licensed contractors get day passes to park on residential streets where they have jobs. Each pass will let them park for one day, until 5 pm. DDOT will set up a system for them to buy these passes, at a cost of $10 per day, and can adjust the rates in the future with a rulemaking.

This is a terrific solution to an important problem. (Full disclosure: I talked with Cheh's staff about this approach.) Our streets are reserved for residents, but residents often have contractors working at their houses. Contractors currently get in the habit of just parking illegally and absorbing some number of tickets as the cost of business, a cost they broadly pass on to homeowners.

Instead of making a contractor play a "reverse lottery" that they might get a big ticket, it makes far more sense to simply charge a reasonable fee. Over time, it would make sense for DDOT to customize the fee to different areas. In neighborhoods with plentiful daytime parking, the fee could be lower, and maybe in the neighborhoods with greatest demand it should be higher.

You might ask, should this just apply to contractors? Some people have housecleaners, or nannies, or elder caregivers come to the house. What about them? The answer is simple: a day pass program can work for them too. Maybe the rates would be lower, but this is generally a good solution to the weaknesses of the residential permit parking (RPP) program, and a better approach than annual placards that are too easily abused for areas with high parking demand.

Will the speed camera bill bring peace?

Meanwhile, a committee print of Tommy Wells' and Mary Cheh's bill on lowering speed camera fines (committee report) has many changes, which Council sources say mostly came from Chairman Phil Mendelson. Mendelson is still chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and he referred the bill sequentially to both committees. Therefore, he has the opportunity to make changes.

One significant change is that the bill no longer dedicates any revenue from cameras to more cameras, safety education, traffic officers, or redesigning roads for lower "design speeds," as the original bill did.

As I've written many times, from an abstract policy point of view, lower fines make sense, as the level of fine doesn't appear to correlate with driver behavior. However, also from an abstract policy point of view, politicians shouldn't base their decisions on who shouts loudest, yet we know they do.

As Cheh noted in her opening statement at the hearing on the bill, the biggest motivation behind the bill is to remove public opposition that could stand in the way of more widespread safety-based enforcement. The question is, will this bill do that?

It could be that lowering fines suddenly creates a peace in the District where drivers and driver organizations generally accept cameras. Or, it might be that people who get tickets will scream about it just the same. While the purpose of the cameras shouldn't be and shouldn't have been revenue, now that they're here, there are other things one could spend money on besides buying down fines. Is it worth it?

We can't really know. The rationale for creating a special fund to help with future camera purchases was that it would make it easier for MPD to get new cameras without such a long and tortured process as it had for this last round. On the other hand, DC budget director Eric Goulet argued in his testimony that the fund wouldn't really end the need for the council to specifically approve new camera spending and contracts anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Another way to deal with this uncertainty would be to make the new fines temporary. Let's see how things work out for a year or so. If there's peace in camera land, then it was the right move and should be permanent. If we're still having the same arguments, then DC might as well take the revenue for all the headaches.

Fortunately, the new committee print does just that. It includes a sunset provision that it will expire at the end of the 2013 fiscal year (in September 2013). This also means that this bill wouldn't affect the FY2014 budget, which the Council will debate this spring.

It still does mean the bill would use up some of the "unanticipated revenue" that is coming in this year, instead of it going to another program such as the Housing Production Trust Fund.

On the other hand, the fines now aren't going down as much. The original bill set fines at $50 for speeding up to 20 mph over the limit, but now proposes levels of $50 for up to 10 mph over (which MPD doesn't usually ticket for) and $75 for 11-20 over. That probably means it will cost less, though it also means it might be less likely to assuage angry drivers who got a lot of tickets.

Another change, and not a great one, is that the bill now does not distinguish between fines for automated enforcement and fines from a police officer. This is simpler, but wrong. The idea behind lower automated fines is that there should be an inverse relationship between severity and certainty: if the chance of getting caught is higher, the punishment needn't be so high. With a camera, that's the case.

But if there's an area without cameras, but officers are doing some in-person ticket writing, the certainty is low again, so the fine needs to stay higher. Besides, low fines could make it harder for MPD to assign officers to writing tickets in safety trouble spots, since the tickets might not pay for the officer's time any more.

Cheh's committee is marking up the bill today, and then Mendelson's will mark it up tomorrow. He could push for changes, for better or worse, at that point. Then it will go before the Council, where members could try to amend it to further change provisions or restore some from the original bill.

In March, Mayor Gray's proposed budget included $84 million in revenue from speeding tickets, cuts to many human services and affordable housing programs, and a "priority restoration list." Top on the list are homeless shelters, youth mental health services, and the Housing Production Trust Fund.

The latest budget is the second year the Housing Production Trust Fund has had the majority of its funding used for other programs, with a commitment that it would be a priority for restoration. Of the $38 million removed in the last two years, however, the District has only restored $2 million.

Spending money first on lowering speeding tickets runs counter to the Mayor's and Council's own commitments to fund key programs with the first available resources. The Mayor and Council agreed to the list during budget negotiations. This allowed residents directly see the trade-offs between programs, and represented as a set of promises to residents about how it would spend extra revenue.

The Mayor and Council want to act quickly to respond to the public concern over the cost of traffic violations, but they have dragged their feet finding funding to restore the Housing Production Trust Fund and funding the other critical areas. They should not speed to a resolution, without looking at the other impacts this choice would bring to many people in the District of Columbia.