Washington is a town famous for gridlock, but city officials have found a way to make it pay.
The District in the 2011 budget year issued 1,551 tickets for “failure to clear intersection” — or creating gridlock — to drivers whose cars were blocking cross streets after traffic lights turned red, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles. That topped the 1,080 gridlock tickets issued the year before.
At $100 a ticket, gridlock has generated $263,100 for the District over the last two years.
Gridlock tickets are just one initiative officials are using to unclog D.C. streets at rush hour. But they don’t sit well with some people.
John Townsend of AAA Mid-Atlantic says ticketing gridlocked drivers isn’t fair.
“That is the stupidest ticket I have ever heard of in my life. Because what it comes down to is intentionality. Because what am I supposed to do?” he said. “No one should obstruct traffic at an intersection, but I’m telling you traffic can back up quickly. And that’s the problem. You can become an innocent victim if someone changes lanes quickly and you’re stuck. And cab drivers do it all the time.”
The ticketing enforcement complements the District’s “No Gridlock Please” signs at intersections, and tickets can be issued by city police, Capitol Police or U.S. Park Police, as well as District Department of Transportation traffic enforcement officers, who are not police but who were given the power to ticket vehicles in 2009.
The police department also has traffic officers stationed at busy intersections in each police district, as well as on Interstate 395 to make sure cars keep moving and to clear accidents, Lt. Nicholas Breul said.
“We’ve been criticized in the past for not clearing those accidents quickly, and it creates gridlock all the way back in Virginia,” he said.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier in February advocated installing cameras that, like speed cameras and red-light cameras, would take pictures of offenders blocking intersections so that tickets could later be mailed to them. The District currently has 50 red-light cameras throughout the city and 78 speed cameras.
But gridlock cameras aren’t on their way to the District yet. Breul said as far as he knew, no such cameras have been installed.
