It looks like the speed cameras on the portion of I-83 in Baltimore City has resulted in a drastic reduction in speeding.
It turns out that the traffic enforcement folks has a sad about this, because they are not generating the revenue that they expected.
Sorry, this is just a win. Speed limits should be about safety, not generating cahs:
It is possible Baltimore drivers do not have the lead feet the city once thought?
As the city approaches the one-year mark since the installation of speed cameras along an infamously dangerous section of Interstate 83, transportation officials are finding the number of citations issued has been significantly fewer than expected — leaving a substantial hole in the municipal budget.
As of May 30, 283,696 citations were issued from the two cameras that began enforcement July 13, according to data from the city’s Open Baltimore data website. That’s far short of the 656,000 officials projected they would issue in the first year of the program.
City budget officials don’t anticipate those numbers will improve much by the end of the fiscal year, either. A total of about 290,000 are now expected to be issued by July 1, based upon citation rates thus far, Budget Director Laura Larsen said.
That’s both good and bad news for Baltimore. The good news is drivers appear to be slowing down, which was the objective of the camera program when it was approved by state legislators and the city spending board.
The bad news, however, is the city is barely breaking even on the cost of operating the cameras. Almost no money will be generated to improve Interstate 83, which was a selling point for legislators who dedicated the funds to that purpose.
Barely breaking even? That's because the city is not operating the system. Some for-profit vendor is, and it is extremely lucrative for them, but not at all for the the City of Baltimore.
Privatizing law enforcement is always a bad idea, but even worse is turning law enforcement into tax collectors.
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