Photo by Chris Rief

The D.C. government issued $84.9 million worth of traffic fines through its network of speed and traffic cameras mounted throughout the city in fiscal 2012, and $6.2 million came from a single speed camera.

That haul, the Post reports, was provided by a speed camera on New York Avenue NE mounted between the intersection with Florida Avenue NE and the Ninth Street NE overpass. In total, the camera was responsible for the issuing of 116,734 tickets over a 23-month period, totaling $11.6 million. And the Metropolitan Police Department is just fine with that:

“We believe we have made an impact,” said Gwendolyn Crump, spokeswoman for the D.C. police. “There have been 16 fatalities in 2012, compared to 28 at this time last year, for a 43 percent reduction of traffic fatalities. There is great value in slowing drivers down not only for their own safety, but also for safety of all other traveling parties.”

Only a pair of cameras installed at the intersection of D.C. 295 and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge are more lucrative, collecting $15.9 million during fiscal 2012. The head of AAA Mid-Atlantic, which requested the information on the cameras, told the Post that many drivers treat 295 like a freeway and are penalized because even though the route is numbered, it is not marked as a highway.

There are 46 speed cameras and 47 red-light cameras mounted throughout the District, and while some members of the D.C. Council have proposed lowering speeding tickets issued by cameras to $50, Mayor Vince Gray has been cool to that idea. For all of fiscal 2012, the District issued $178.4 million in traffic fines, with cameras now accounting for nearly half of that.

A group of traffic camera opponents are keeping a map of cameras mounted in the District and suburban Maryland:

View Speed Cameras in Maryland and DC in a larger map