Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie.

The city government must be torn. On the one hand, far fewer drivers appear to be breaking the law than they believed. On the other, they really could have used the extra revenue from such bad behavior.

Mark Segraves reports that the city will have to make up about $7 million in revenue they had projected would come in through new speeding cameras attached to street sweepers. Turns out that the cams only caught 23,500 scofflaws (the city had estimated they’d get 237,000), and only brought in $390,000 since last summer. And it’s not just sweepers: D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi said that revenue from red light cameras fell about $12.5 million short of projections, as well.

You know, given the reputation of most of the drivers around this town, I’m actually leaning toward giving the government a pass on this one.