D.C. added more officers to its “bike force” last November to monitor bike lanes and ticket offenders who block the dedicated lanes. But the pandemic drastically altered travel patterns and freed up space around the District’s roads, limiting the number of tickets being issued.

The year also brought higher fines and new methods to ticket people for bike lane obstructions.

The District wrote 961 tickets for parking or stopping in a bike lane during April through September, the latest data available. That’s a 31% drop from the same time last year when they wrote 1,392 tickets.

Higher fines and more enforcement is part of an effort to keep cyclists safe. Many times blocked bike lanes force cyclists out into busy traffic lanes that could result in crashes.

Felicia Farrar McLemore, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works, said D.C. attributes the overall decline in bike lane citations issued March through September to DPW’s modified operations.

Both DPW and the District Department of Transportation modified services like suspending rush hour parking restrictions and street sweeping ticket enforcement during the pandemic. DPW also suspended booting and towing vehicles.

“Full deployment of enforcement staff was impacted due to the District’s operational adjustment in response to the public health emergency,” she said.

Traffic was also down dramatically in 2020.

DPW hired 22 new parking enforcement officers to focus on bike issues last year. They aimed to hire four more, but not enough people passed the class to fill the jobs. Those positions have since been frozen because of the pandemic and the suspension of most parking enforcement in the city.

These officers are not focused exclusively on bike lanes but are assigned areas where bike lane violations are frequent.

“The goal is to gain a better perspective of the challenges District cyclists face and address these challenges in real-time,” DPW has said in a tweet.

D.C. has had multiple ticketing “blitzes” in an effort to raise awareness on blocked bike lanes, but many offenders were leaving the scene before tickets could be issued.

So enforcement officers were also given the ability to photograph vehicles blocking bike lanes and mail the ticket and image to the registered address.

This year, D.C. upped the price for blocking a bike lane from $65 to $150.