U.S. National Park Service to use photo radar

By: Drivers.com staff

Date: Monday, 13. November 2006

Republished courtesy of the Transportation Communications Newsletter. Email: transport-communications@egroups.com

WTOP Radio in Washington, D.C. has learned that the National Park Service will begin using a photo radar system to identify and send tickets to violators. In what will be the first such venture in the country, the operation will begin on the George Washington Parkway where tests of the system have been conducted over the past 10 months. Cameras have been placed in discrete wood boxes atop short poles north of Reagan National Airport at Gravelly Point and north of the CIA.

The required public hearing period has just expired but Parkway Superintendent Audrey Calhoun told WTOP she's not sure when tickets will start going out to violators. "We're still testing some of the systems, such as the back-office to make sure we can handle the volume," said Calhoun.

Unlike the District, which has a cooperative agreement with Lockheed Martin to install and maintain the cameras and shares revenues, the Park Service wants to run the operation themselves.... and keep all the revenues. Some of the cameras in the District have been very lucrative. The camera at the intersection of New York Avenue and 4th Street, Northwest, was catching as many as 500 violators per hour. For each of those violations paid, the District receives 55-dollars and Lockheed Martin gets 20-dollars.

Calhoun says the ruling will allow cameras to be placed on ALL of the parkways around Washington patrolled by Park Police including the Suitland Parkway, the Baltimore/Washington Parkway, the Rock Creek Parkway, the Clara Barton Parkway, and others.

The National Motorists Association says in a letter to its membership that this is nothing more than a money maker for the Park Service, which "has been hard pressed for development and maintenance funding for a long time. Photo radar will be viewed as their salvation to generate money for internal park projects. This also means that if this is successful in D.C., it will only be a matter of months before you see this type of enforcement in all of our National parks. This action needs to be stopped before every federal agency that manages public land views this as easy money."