Bowser tries to address DC budget shortfall with hundreds of new traffic cameras
Brady Knox
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Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is attempting to balance the city’s budget with revenue from hundreds of traffic cameras while cutting transportation and safety measures.
More than 300 new traffic cameras are expected to bring $578 million in revenue, according to the Washington Post, a key factor of Bowser’s newest budget proposal. The new $19.7 billion budget, first introduced last month, also proposes cutting half of the DC Circulator system’s routes, cutting funding for new buses, and eliminating crossing guard positions.
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The 342 new traffic cameras are due to debut in the summer. Of these, 140 will be mounted on buses, which will search for cars illegally using bus lanes. The remainder will focus on targeting and fining vehicles due to speed, red lights, stop signs, and oversize vehicle violations.
Many residents and activists have bashed the measure as a cynical move to raise revenue rather than focusing on safety.
“The mayor and her folks are basically now conceding that the main purpose [of the traffic cameras] is for revenue, not for making our streets safer,” Zach Israel, a traffic safety advocate, said.
“If the goal is to change driver behavior, a good way to go of achieving that is actually using the revenue that we get, which is a lot, to actually make the physical infrastructure safer so that it’s harder for drivers to speed and it’s harder for drivers to go barreling through stop signs,” he added.
Besides traffic cameras, the proposals regarding cuts to public transportation have drawn a number of critics, including Democrats.
“This budget does a lot of damage to our transportation and transit systems,” D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D), chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee, told the outlet. “It’s moving the city in the wrong direction.”
Criticisms were particularly directed at the fact that the change appeared to be a complete reversal from the mayor’s official policy one month ago.
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“It’s a policy flip-flop,” Allen said at a hearing Monday. “A month ago, they were telling everyone publicly that they were looking at expanding the Circulator, and now they’re looking at essentially permanently cutting the Circulator in half.”
Bowser’s transportation chief Everett Lott said that the decision to make the cuts were “difficult” but necessary, citing the low number of riders compared to public transit use before the COVID-19 pandemic.