Cameras used to capture dozens of speeders whizzing by Howard County's schools are prompting a renewed push for state legislation that would allow the use of laser-equipped cameras to issue speeding tickets.
Howard County Executive James N. Robey and Police Chief Wayne Livesay tried to persuade the county's reluctant state legislators to go along yesterday at an informal breakfast meeting to discuss the coming General Assembly session.
Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan said he strongly supports the effort, as does Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, according to Yolanda Winkler, deputy director of intergovernmental relations.
"We can't have police officers on every street, and stop signs - people ignore them," Duncan said. Winkler said, "We're on board," though specific legislation has not been drafted.
Montgomery Del William A. Bronrott said he favors legislation to create a program for whichever counties want to use the camera technology. Bronrott said speeding is of increasing concern in traffic-choked Montgomery County, where a committee he headed found that it is a major factor in the growing number of pedestrians hit by vehicles.
With Maryland's revenue woes well known, Robey talked up the speed-camera legislation, which would not cost the state anything because of the revenue from tickets. Bills to allow use of the cameras, which work like red-light cameras, failed in the 2002 legislative session, with Baltimore City and Howard and Montgomery counties the chief proponents.
Fears about "big brother" spying and Baltimore's system, which pays a percentage of the proceeds from each ticket to the private company that operates the system, killed the bills.
Howard and Montgomery's red-light system works on a flat-fee basis, so the contractor operating the cameras has no incentive to issue more tickets. Moreover, county police decide which incidents result in tickets, not the contractor.
"The attempt here is not to make it a money-maker, but to make it a lifesaver," Bronrott said.
To prevent defeat, Robey invited skeptical legislators to insert any limits they want in a bill, including a sunset provision that would allow the law to die after a few years unless the General Assembly renews it.
"I don't think anyone can argue red-light cameras [don't] save lives," Livesay told the legislators at a Columbia restaurant. "School zones and residential speeding are the No. 1 complaint" police receive, he said. If approved next year, the cameras would be used only near schools, where test cameras have been installed during the past year to build a statistical argument for the devices.
"Give the local jurisdictions the power to decide," Robey added.
The issue is a practical one for police and county government. Does Howard County want to assign 20 to 30 officers a month to radar duty at a cost of up to $50 an hour, when just one test camera can catch 10 to 20 times more violators at no cost?
"If we can save lives and slow cars down. ... Kids are being hurt and dying out there," Robey said, describing a particularly hilly stretch of College Avenue in Ellicott City that attracts thrill-seeking motorists from around the area. In August, two Anne Arundel teens were killed on the road.
If word gets around among young drivers that thrill-seeking on College Avenue would bring an expensive civil citation to the young drivers' parents, the problem would likely go away, Robey said.
To bolster their case, Robey and Livesay produced statistics gathered from cameras that measured vehicle speed on several county roads near schools.
On Centennial Lane, one of the county's busiest collector roads running north and south between U.S. 40 in Ellicott City and Route 108 near Columbia, a camera operating only during school start and dismissal times found an average of 371 violators an hour, including 71 motorists who were moving 15 mph or higher than the 25-mph speed limit. Montgomery Road, which connects U.S. 29 and U.S. 1, was just as bad, with an average of 372 motorists an hour speeding and 59 going 15 mph or faster beyond the 25-mph limit.
"We have three schools on that street," Centennial Elementary School PTA President Maribeth Eckenrode said. "Plenty of people are concerned [about speeding]."
Another chart showed that using uniformed officers produced an average of two to four citations an hour, compared with more than 200 violations documented per hour with the cameras in the same spots.
None of that mollified some opponents, however.
Del. Donald E. Murphy, a Catonsville Republican who did not seek re-election, vowed to come to Annapolis to testify against the speed-camera legislation.
"It's outrageous. I don't necessarily trust a radar gun to be accurate. Where do you draw the line? It's always for the children and the school zones - then it's everywhere," he said about police attempts to get the cameras.
Robey also asked legislators to seek $500,000 in state bond money to begin restoring Blandair Mansion in Columbia and $300,000 for renovations at the county's historic Circuit Court building in Ellicott City.