College Park has added a new speed monitoring system off of Paint Branch Parkway near the Trolley Trail. Starting Nov. 15, vehicles exceeding the speed limit by 12 mph will be given $40 tickets.
After new speed cameras issued nearly 8,000 tickets on Metzerott Road in less than a month, a College Park City Council member representing that section of the city said he wants to emphasize the council has not intended to create a speed trap.
The Metzerott Road speed cameras are located where the speed limit drops from 40 to 30 miles per hour, and they issue citations to every driver traveling 12 mph or more above the limit.
The ticket volume from these cameras has dwarfed that of other speed cameras in the city — on Paint Branch Parkway and Rhode Island Avenue, which chalked up 263 and 406 tickets since Nov. 15, respectively. Divided amongst the 22 days the cameras have been issuing citations, the Metzerott cameras have been ticketing an average of 363 drivers a day, according to city data.
Of the $40 fine from each ticket, the city receives $24, with the rest of the money going to the company that operates and maintains the cameras. If all 8,663 of the tickets that had been issued as of Tuesday are paid, the city would collect more than $200,000.
Officials haven’t yet determined how camera revenue will be spent.
At Tuesday’s city council meeting, District 4 Councilman Marcus Afzali said he had received several complaints from his constituents about the cameras and that he hopes to see the council discuss the issue at a January meeting to allay concerns the city is using the cameras as a fundraiser rather than for safety reasons.
“This isn’t staff trying to trap anyone,” Afzali said. “But obviously there are problems there.”
Because Metzerott is a county-owned road, the city cannot adjust the speed limit — a suggestion that was also raised at the meeting.
Although the cameras have been in place for less than a month, drivers may already be learning to slow down, according to city public services director Bob Ryan.
“As expected, the daily average number of citations is decreasing, showing the effectiveness of the program in reducing speed,” Ryan wrote in an e-mail.
Sophomore letters and sciences major Michael Brosius, who received one of the thousands of tickets issued to Metzerott Road drivers, said he was caught off-guard when the speed limit dropped by 10 mph.
According to his citation, he said, he was traveling 44 mph when he passed the camera in the 30-mph zone.
“I don’t like them,” he said of the cameras. “If you’re going to get caught, you should get caught by an officer.”
Junior elementary education major Rachel Jackson said she has not received a speeding ticket from one of College Park’s speed cameras. She added she was shocked to hear about the volume of tickets issued in the last few weeks.
“That’s crazy. They’re just trying to find a way to make money,” she said.
But District 2 Councilman Jack Perry — who received a speed camera ticket on Kenilworth Avenue, outside College Park — said speeding voids a driver’s right to complain about the cameras.
“The worst thing about this is that I hate crybabies,” Perry said. “And I’ll tell you what, when Jack goes down Kenilworth Avenue now, he goes slower. Does it piss people off? It does. But they will slow people down.”
The city still plans to install more cameras — on Route 1 and University Boulevard — but officials have not yet said exactly when they will begin to operate.
mccarty at umdbk dot com
