Officials from the Department of Public Works were brought in front of the D.C. Council Monday to explain why their traffic enforcement program is lacking.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, who heads the transportation committee, called for the hearing after finding out that more than 633,000 vehicles have two or more tickets that are older than 60 days and are eligible to be booted. But DPW only has a staff of four right now operating in two booting teams, according to acting DPW Director Christine Davis. They can only boot about 50 vehicles a day, meaning it would take more than 25 years to get through a backlog at the current rate.

“Drivers who speed, run red lights or stop signs and otherwise behave dangerously behind the wheel pose a direct threat to other users of the roadways, including pedestrians, cyclists, mobility devices, other drivers,” Cheh said. “A critical strategy for curbing those behaviors is ensuring that tickets are enforced. Unfortunately, by and large, this is not happening. These drivers are still driving on our streets behaving recklessly, presumably because they know DPW is doing almost nothing to catch them. True enforcement is critical to reducing dangerous driving behaviors.”

The news comes as traffic deaths are at a 13-year-high in the District and dangerous driving is on the rise during the pandemic. Most of the hearing focused on repeat offenders: speeders and red-light runners who are captured by the District’s automated traffic enforcement cameras, but who, according to councilmembers, don’t face consequences and aren’t forced to change their dangerous driving behavior.

Cheh highlighted 3,000 vehicles that had 20-plus tickets, 500 vehicles with 40+ tickets, and one Virginia vehicle that has 180 moving violations. One D.C. vehicle has 245 tickets worth $32,000 in fines.

District residents do have to pay the fines if they want to renew their vehicle’s registration. But Maryland and Virginia vehicles, which make up nearly 80% of the boot-eligible vehicles, do not face similar penalties because the states don’t have reciprocity agreements for camera tickets, only tickets issued by police. The District has been working to get those agreements with little success so far.

But in the meantime, traffic safety advocates and councilmembers want to see increased booting of cars.

“We’re really talking about is an opportunity to find and potentially remove cars from our streets that are being driven dangerously,” At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson said of the hearing. “Our pedestrians and bikers are under assault and frustratingly we are further from Vision Zero today than we were when we started down this path six years ago.”

Davis of DPW named a few roadblocks to increasing booting efforts. Staffing had been reduced in prior years because of budget constraints, she said, but more crews are needed. Davis said they have been authorized to hire three more workers for “boot crews,” and she plans to post the jobs soon.

DPW boot crews travel on regular routes through certain wards to identify vehicles that are boot eligible, according to Davis. Boots can be removed if drivers pay fines and are towed after 24 hours to the Blue Plains Impoundment and Storage Facility, where they can be charged $20 a day for storage. Vehicles are sold at auction after 28 days.

But DPW has limited equipment and space to store vehicles. The department has 268 boots and its impoundment lot only has room for 818 vehicles. On average, 750 spaces are occupied on any given day. Officials are searching for more space in the District, but have so far not been happy with what they’ve found.

And some councilmembers pointed out that crews aren’t being sent to respond when high ticket vehicles are spotted.

“I’m concerned that DPW is not necessarily using its data to prioritize the highest risk vehicles that are eligible,” Henderson said. “For example, there seems to be limited [communication] between its boot crews who run set routes, and parking enforcement teams patrolling our streets with license plate scanners. When the parking enforcement teams finds a boot-eligible car, there are no extra red flags when that car has serious underlying tickets.”

Ticketing — in the District and more broadly — is also riddled with equity issues. As of 2019, D.C. police stopped Black motorists at higher rates than white drivers. And Black drivers are disproportionately affected by a city law that prohibits drivers with more than $100 in unpaid police-issued traffic tickets from renewing their licenses. Though in 2018, D.C. outlawed the practice of suspending licenses for unpaid traffic tickets, so they didn’t take away someone’s ability to get to work, school, or other obligations. Virginia and Maryland passed similar laws in recent years.

But Deputy Mayor Lucinda Babers says that 2018 law tied officials’ hands. “We lost a critical tool in ensuring motorists comply with District law, and subsequently, the District experienced a substantial increase in the number of outstanding traffic fines,” she said.

Henderson said she doesn’t want to go back to holding licenses until fines are paid, but she said the District does need to be able to administer license points for camera tickets or find other tools to keep people accountable for driving.

In New York City, officials launched an education program targeting and hoping to reform repeat offenders, but it’s unclear how effective the program is: One participant in the class went on to kill a 3-month-old at an intersection, according to Streetsblog New York.

D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman has previously introduced similar legislation that has restorative justice at the forefront instead of fines and taking away drivers licenses. That proposed bill didn’t go anywhere and it’s unclear if Silverman will bring it back.

Only two community members testified during the hearing. Alex Baca of Greater Greater Washington said DPW should intensively focus on vehicles with a high number of unpaid tickets and that “someone who frequently disregards traffic laws and doesn’t pay tickets because they can’t or won’t, shouldn’t be allowed to drive.”

ANC 6C04 Commissioner Mark Eckenwiler had several suggestions.  He proposed a rapid response booting team that could quickly attach a boot to vehicles when spotted by DPW’s mobile scanners or residents. He said that team should focus on chronic violators with tens of thousands of dollars in tickets and also focus on non-D.C. residents which have fewer repercussions because of the lack of a reciprocity agreement with Maryland and Virginia. Lastly, he said DPW should incentivize citizens to help by giving tipsters a 5-10% bounty for turning in scofflaws. 

Cheh said she is not in favor of citizens directly writing tickets like one idling-vehicle program in New York City does, but rather would see residents send in tips to 311.

Henderson noted that the aim of traffic enforcement should be trying to change behavior, likening the process to psychology.

“How do we move people to do what we want them to do, and in this case, move them to be safer on our roads?” she asked “What compels people? What encourages them to say, ‘ok I’ll follow the speed limit, even if it might make you five minutes late?'”

Still, she expressed frustration with the pace at which DPW was addressing the high number of booted cars and traffic violations.

“I’m excited to hear that you guys are having this conversation, but I’m disappointed because we’ve had so many traffic violence and fatalities this year, I am disappointed to hear… (officials) aren’t moving quicker on this.”