TxDOT shelves plan to test cameras to catch speeders

August 31, 2007

By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News

Heavy-footed drivers on Texas highways won't have to worry about cameras keeping track of their speed after all – at least not yet.

Texas' transportation department is shelving plans to test the use of cameras to catch speeders. The $2.5 million pilot program would have sent warnings – but not tickets – to drivers photographed going over the speed limit.
In a letter to lawmakers released Friday, Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson said opposition to the increasingly common use of cameras to monitor traffic has convinced him to postpone efforts to test their use on highways.

"I watched carefully the hearings on red-light cameras and speed cameras conducted by the legislature this past session," Mr. Williamson said in his letter to state Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Southlake. "It occurred to me that positions were fervently held, though without much valid research available to support them."

When the news broke earlier this summer about the department's plans to test using the cameras to catch speeders, Ms. Truitt sent an angry letter of protest signed by 26 of her colleagues. She noted that only months before the Legislature had only months outlawed the use of cameras by local governments to catch speeders.

"How hypocritical is it that the state would force the municipalities to cease and desist use of these devices, and then turn around and employ the technology for the same purposes itself," her letter said.

That legislation had passed amid rising concerns about the increasing use of cameras by police departments to catch drivers who run red lights.

In his response, however, Mr. Williamson said he was canceling the pilot program until at least June 2009. But he remains convinced the idea has merit and hopes to discuss it again with lawmakers.

Cameras – more than 2,000 of them – are already in use throughout Texas' highway system, he pointed out. From cameras that enforce tolls, to the local red-light cameras, to the hundreds of cameras that allow citizens to monitor traffic conditions from the Web, their use to control or monitor traffic is nothing new.

"What I heard during the session is that some people were upset about the Big Brother idea of having cameras in use on the highways," Christopher Lippincott, state transportation department spokesman, said Friday. "But I think that's a concern about something that already exists. Cameras are already here and being used."

Mr. Williamson also acknowledged in his letter that he had proposed testing the speed cams for another purpose, as well. Each year, he said, lawmakers divert hundreds of millions of highway dollars to fund the Department of Public Safety. In 2007, that figure was $527 million, he said.

"It was my thought that if we could demonstrate a more cost-effective method of reducing accidents on our highway system, perhaps future legislators would be less inclined to transfer ever-increasing amounts of our gas tax to law enforcement," Mr. Williamson said.