The region’s Transportation Planning Board is asking governors in Virginia and Maryland and the Mayor of D.C. to create a task force and work together to accomplish ticket reciprocity for speed and red-light cameras in the region.

Generally, if a Maryland or Virginia driver gets pulled over by police for a moving violation, they have to pay that fine to renew their license or registration. But that rule doesn’t apply if it’s a D.C. red light or camera ticket. That loophole, regional leaders say, is undermining traffic enforcement strategies.

“Enforcement is a critical strategy, especially as a means to communicate that there will be consequences for dangerous driving behaviors,” the letter says. “But the high levels of cross-boundary driving in the National Capital Region, combined with the lack of inter-jurisdictional reciprocity for automated traffic enforcement penalties, has resulted in fewer drivers being held accountable for their dangerous driving behaviors, thereby diminishing this strategy’s effectiveness.”

If you think you’ve heard about this issue before, you’re right.

It’s gone through a long process. In 2020, the D.C. Council passed a bill mandating Mayor Muriel Bowser negotiate speed/red light camera ticket reciprocity by October of this year, but those negotiations never happened. The District’s Deputy Mayor for Operations and Infrastructure Lucinda Babers punted the issue to the regional Transportation Planning Board to work out. At November’s meeting, board members said they wanted to get local input and suggest the idea to their own executives before sending a regional letter. And now, finally, the TPB voted to send a letter (you can read the full letter by clicking on Item 8 at this link).

At Wednesday’s meeting, TPB Chair Charles Allen admitted the letter is “actually quite limited.”

It asks the executives to create a regional task force that would work toward an agreement on regional reciprocity for automated traffic enforcement citations and start a review of traffic laws across the region. The task force would also look at how those laws are enforced to recommend ways they might work together as a region to increase roadway safety.

“It doesn’t actually create reciprocity, although I sure wish it would,” Allen said. “I frankly think is the bare minimum that we can do to ask executives to work together toward this type of reciprocity.”

Allen talked about a series of traffic injuries and deaths that he says are the reason officials are talking about reciprocity in the first place.

He cited several recent incidents: A five-year-old girl killed riding a bike in her neighborhood; a nine-year-old hit by a reckless hit and run driver left with stitches and scars on his face; his friend’s parent killed by a driver when she was walking to a pharmacy; two little girls severely hurt while walking to school on “walk to school day.”

“And I know that I’m not alone in this,” Allen noted. “Each of my colleagues in Maryland and Virginia probably has equal stories that they can share about how they and their friends have been personally impacted by violence and exploits on our streets.”

Allen noted the difficulties of different constituencies, different political realities, different legal systems, and roads built differently in each jurisdiction. The TPB staff put together a list of which jurisdictions currently use camera enforcement and how.

“All this says is that the region should use all of our levers to make sure that our roadways are safe,” he said. “And regional reciprocity for automated enforcement is one of those levers. I think a letter can actually be a great example, to work together as a region.”

It’s unclear where the conversation will go from here, or how long the process will take. John Lynch of the Virginia Department of Transportation said, “we’re looking forward to working through this issue to make all our roadways safe.” Earl Lewis of the Maryland Department of Transportation said he appreciated the collaborative process so that “we can all be supportive of this important safety initiative.”