In the long-running battle between congressional Republicans and the local government of Washington, D.C., GOP lawmakers have found a new target: the city’s ban on making a right turn when there’s a red light.
The attempt to force the nation’s capital to allow such turns mirrors a traffic policy dispute that erupted a half-century ago. Except back then, it was the Democrats who forced the city’s hand.
In March, the House Oversight Committee approved the “Stop DC CAMERA Act,” a bill by Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), which would ban the city from using traffic enforcement cameras and from prohibiting right turns on red. Perry has said his goal is “to bring driving autonomy back to the District.” The bill was approved on a 21-19 party-line vote, and if it passes Congress, the legislation could stop a big money-maker for the city in automated tickets, which range from $100 to $500.
The GOP proposal is drawing concern from elected officials in D.C., a deep-blue enclave of nearly 700,000 people that, due to its unique “home rule” status, constantly faces the threat of Congress overruling its actions. That’s always a live possibility when, as is currently the case, Republicans hold the White House and have House and Senate majorities.
Political friction is hardly surprising, as all Democratic presidential candidates have won overwhelmingly in Washington since the federal district got a vote in national elections through ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961. For several years in the late 1990s and into the early 21st century, congressional Republicans sought to use D.C. as a policy petri dish of sorts — among other things, ban needle exchange programs, gun control efforts, and D.C.-enacted laws to ease marijuana restrictions. Then-President Bill Clinton’s veto pen spared some D.C. laws, while congressional GOP lawmakers at times succeeded at blocking others.
As for the current right-on-red proposal, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a March 17 statement that the GOP bill, which also targets the use of city cameras that clamp down on moving violations, would send a “dangerous message that reckless driving is acceptable in our nation’s capital.”
Under a 2022 D.C. law called the Safer Streets Amendment Act, right turns on red lights are banned at most intersections in the city.
Before that, the city began allowing right turns on red at some intersections in 1979, but only under intense financial pressure from a Democratic-controlled Congress. At the time, Democrats were championing right turns on red as a way to save energy by reducing the amount of time that cars spent idling. In a twist, Democratic cities today are pushing bans on these turns to protect pedestrians and bicyclists from getting hit by cars.
Different party in charge, similar fight
Right turns on red in D.C. have been a source of tension since the days that Democrats dominated Congress. House Democrats held an uninterrupted majority from 1955 to 1995. Democrats controlled the Senate for 34 of those 40 years.
Washington, D.C., became one of the last places in the United States to allow the turns, following a 1975 congressional mandate.
Sen. Dale Bumpers, an Arkansas Democrat who advocated allowing the practice to help the country save gasoline, expressed annoyance at having to wait to turn on red lights as he made his way from his home in Bethesda, Maryland, to the Capitol. He got Congress to withhold federal energy funds from the city unless D.C. got on board.
In a December 1979 story, The New York Times reported that D.C., “which is full of traffic circles and intersections with acute angles and some of the most jumbled traffic jams in the nation,” had just spent $250,000 [about $1.1 million today] to put up “No Turn on Red” signs at 3,100 traffic lights.
“Instead of placing the signs, the city could have simply held on to its resistance to the national right-turn‐on‐red policy that became law when Gerald R. Ford was President,” the paper added, referring to the 1975 congressional mandate. “The provision was included in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act largely at the insistence of Senator Dale Bumpers, a Democrat from Charleston, Ark., a town of 1,500 persons that has no traffic lights.”
The story referenced studies of West Coast cities that found a minimum or “acceptable” increase in pedestrian injuries and vehicle collisions, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Such injuries are a big factor in today’s push to ban rights on red. According to the New York Times, D.C. faced a loss of nearly a half-million dollars – about $2.15 million in today’s money.
“The city capitulated. But grudgingly,” the story noted.
At the time, there was a national debate about allowing these turns. California had been the first to allow it, back in 1947, leading to one of the more memorable lines in Woody Allen’s 1977 classic movie “Annie Hall,” when his character griped during a visit to Los Angeles, “I don’t want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.”
In the 1970s, traffic specialists used the acronym “RTOR” to describe the practice of making a right turn on red, but opponents of the RTOR provision of the 1975 energy law had a different one: GLFM, for “Green Light for Mayhem.”
The Federal Highway Administration hired an engineering firm to study the practice, and in its final report, the firm raised the same kind of safety concerns that the D.C. Council has today, noting that if the turn is made “improperly, i.e., without stopping and yielding, collisions with other vehicles or pedestrians could occur.”
By 1977, when New York and New Jersey allowed the turns, it was already in place or about to be in 44 states. But Woody Allen didn’t have to worry about it invading his hometown, New York City, from the trend sweeping the nation.
As the New York Times reported in a December 1976 story, “There are so many congested intersections and crosswalks in the city that the right turn on red there will be permitted only if a sign says it can be done. At this stage, it appears that the vast majority of intersections in Manhattan and other busy areas will continue to prohibit RTOR.”
In recent years, what was once a cause célèbre on the left for environmental reasons has been ditched as a liberal cause.
“In blue cities across the country, local road policy in the past decade has been tweaked in the name of making things safer and more enticing for non-drivers — often by making things slower and more annoying for motorists,” observed Michael Schaffer in a 2024 POLITICO Magazine column. “Speed limits have been lowered. Traffic enforcement has been boosted. Car lanes have been turned over to bikes. And liberal bastions like Seattle and Ann Arbor have embraced a policy that once existed only in New York: banning right turns on red, which can lead to deadly collisions with pedestrians and cyclists.”
“In a polarized country,” he added, “it was inevitable that this would become more than just a disagreement over traffic circulation and moving violations.”
The progressive magazine Mother Jones called for an end to right turns on red in a 2022 story.
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“It’s an obsolete relic of the 1970s oil crisis. It’s dangerous to pedestrians,” wrote Abigail Weinberg. “And, if you drive a car in the United States, you likely do it every day. It’s time to get rid of right-turn-on-red.”
When D.C. sought to keep its ban on red light turns a half century ago, it was resisting a national trend — today, it’s riding one. But in both cases, the city is running into resistance from Congress in yet another demonstration of the limits of home rule.
Frederic J. Frommer (@ffrommer), a sports and politics historian who has written for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and other national publications, is working on a book on ‘70s baseball.