Republicans in Washington are harnessing the gripes of speeding suburban drivers across the nation with a new proposal to defund the 26-year-old traffic enforcement camera program in the nation’s capital and override the city’s law banning right turns on red.
Hollowing months of tough-talk from Trump about the city’s alleged state of disorder, House Republicans included the proposals in their Financial Services and General Government Committee budget released last week, amid President Trump’s “takeover” of the D.C. police and deployment of National Guard troops to patrol the city,
Speed, red light, stop sign, school bus stop-arm and bus priority enforcement cameras have been a longtime bugaboo of the House GOP, whose members pushed a similar provision in 2023 that failed to become law. Trump’s latest intervention in the city’s self-governance in the name of public safety breathed new life into the effort, say Washingtonians.
“They’re using this moment that Trump has built up around ‘making DC safer’ and attempting to run the city in many aspects to raise these points again and push their own personal agendas,” said Jeremiah Lowery of D.C’s Bike, Walk and Bus PAC. “They’re drivers in D.C. They’re not giving any particular motive besides that they want to do this.”
Of course, the data show traffic enforcement cameras reduce traffic crashes: A 2014 report by the District Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Police Department found injuries and crashes both dropped in the three years after the installation of a new enforcement camera.
Yet the cameras remain controversial in the D.C. area despite those numbers — as in other cities, study found cameras and violations to be concentrated in majority Black and low-income neighborhoods. This year the city began offering lower income drivers a discount on the $100 speed camera fine.
“We can debate fines and fees, but at the end of the day traffic cameras are proven to make our streets safer,” Lowery told Streetsblog. “Prohibiting the use of funds for automatic traffic enforcement will make DC’s streets very dangerous and reckless. Essentially, Republicans in Congress — they want to be our DOT.”
Also in House GOP crosshairs: D.C.’s loosely enforced right-on-red ban, which went into effect in January. Like traffic enforcement cameras, right-on-red bans help make streets safer — in this case by reducing conflicts between turning drivers and pedestrians.
Trump and his administration have targeted other aspects of D.C.’s Vision Zero: In the spring, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy used safety as justification to demand D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser rip up Black Lives Matter Plaza and other “murals or other forms of artwork within the traveled way.”
The president, meanwhile, has personally cast aspersions on street design elements like medians and curb cuts, Lowery said.
“He called them ugly and stuff of that nature,” he said. “He doesn’t like the way they look on our roads. It’s all about feeling. None of it’s based on research, none of its based on data.”
The hypocrisy of trying to kill life-saving traffic enforcement tools while claiming D.C.’s leaders are not capable of keeping their residents safe is not lost on local politician, who advocates are counting on to stave off the worst entitled suburban impulses of members of Congress.
“Republicans in Congress are more concerned with getting out of dangerous speeding tickets than preventing job losses or addressing record-high prices hitting Americans. So far this year, DC has seen a 62-percent decrease in traffic deaths and a 10-percent drop in major injuries – traffic cameras and limiting right turns on red work,” D.C. Council Transportation Chair Charles Allen told Streetsblog in a statement.
“People don’t like getting speeding tickets, but they also slow down after they pay their fine and make our streets safer. These work and it’s just one of many ways that show if Republicans in Congress had their way, DC would become a less safe and less successful place.”
DDOT did not return a request for comment.
