Could Congress Kill DC's Speed Cameras? What the Federal Fight Means for DMV Drivers
Could Congress Kill DC's Speed Cameras? What the Federal Fight Means for DMV Drivers
Washington, DC operates one of the most extensive automated traffic enforcement networks in the country. More than 540 cameras blanket the District, monitoring speed, red lights, stop signs, and bus lanes. In fiscal year 2024, the most recent year for which the District has published audited camera-by-camera figures, those cameras collected $181.1 million — nearly double what they brought in the year before.
Now, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are trying to shut the whole system down. If they succeed, it would reshape traffic enforcement across the DMV region overnight.
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What Is Being Proposed
There are two parallel efforts to eliminate DC's camera program:
The DOT proposal: In January 2026, the U.S. Department of Transportation sent a proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget that would outlaw "the operation of automated traffic camera enforcement in the District of Columbia." The language is broad — it would ban speed cameras, red light cameras, stop sign cameras, and bus lane cameras. The proposal is included in a surface transportation bill that Congress is expected to vote on.
The Stop DC CAMERA Act: Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania introduced separate legislation targeting DC's cameras. His bill passed the House Oversight Committee in March 2026 on a party-line vote, with every Democrat voting against it. The bill would also roll back DC's ban on right turns at red lights, which took effect in January 2025.
Perry has been vocal about his motivation, calling automated enforcement a "revenue grab" and noting that more than 80 percent of DC camera fines go to out-of-state drivers — many of them Maryland and Virginia commuters passing through the District.
The Revenue Stakes
DC's automated traffic enforcement revenue has surged as the city added cameras and expanded enforcement zones. These are the audited figures from the District's own revenue chapters, summing the four automated enforcement object codes (red light, photo radar, crosswalk, and no-thru-truck):
- Fiscal year 2023: $98.3 million collected
- Fiscal year 2024: $181.1 million collected
- Fiscal year 2025: not yet published at the line-item level
Revenue collected is not the same thing as fines issued. Over the same period the District assessed far more than it collected, because a large share of camera citations are never paid:
- Fiscal year 2023: $153.0 million assessed
- Fiscal year 2024: $307.1 million assessed
- Fiscal year 2025: $363.1 million assessed
The gap is the story. In FY2024 the District mailed roughly $1.70 in fines for every $1.00 it actually banked.
A note on the $267.3 million figure
You will see a different set of numbers in most coverage of this fight — $139.5 million for FY2023, $213.3 million for FY2024, and $267.3 million for FY2025 — attributed to a spokesperson for the DC Office of the Chief Financial Officer. We do not use them, because they do not reconcile with anything that office publishes.
They are not collected revenue: OCFO's own line items give $98.3 million and $181.1 million for FY2023 and FY2024. They are not assessed fines either, standing at 91%, 69% and 74% of the assessed totals with no consistent relationship. And the FY2025 figure is arithmetically impossible as camera revenue. Total fines and forfeitures of every kind in the District — every camera ticket, every parking ticket, every boot and tow — came to $271.4 million in FY2025. If cameras alone accounted for $267.3 million of that, the District would have collected $4.1 million from all parking enforcement in a city where the equivalent non-camera fines were $51.9 million the year before.
We could not determine what the $267.3 million figure does measure, and we say so rather than repeating it. If it is a cross-fund total that includes old debt collected through the Central Collection Unit, that would be a defensible number — but it would not be annual camera revenue, and nobody quoting it says which it is.
Mayor Muriel Bowser has said that eliminating the cameras would create a "$1 billion hole" in the city's budget over four years.
The revenue is heavily concentrated among a small number of cameras. In calendar year 2025, working from the District's per-citation records, the three highest-earning cameras each assessed more than $8.6 million on their own:
| Camera | Fines assessed, CY2025 | Citations | |---|---|---| | DC-295 southbound, south of Exit 1 | $11.14M | 93,465 | | 600 block Kenilworth Ave NE, southbound | $10.25M | 86,646 | | Potomac River Fwy at 25th St NW | $8.61M | 78,737 |
The top ten cameras together assessed $74.7 million, or 21.5% of the $347.1 million assessed across all 685 camera locations that year. The Potomac River Freeway camera near the Kennedy Center is frequently described as the city's most prolific; by our count it ranks third.
The Safety Argument
DC officials counter that the cameras are about safety, not revenue. The city's Vision Zero initiative aims to eliminate traffic fatalities, and officials point to a 52 percent drop in traffic deaths in 2025 — the lowest number of roadway fatalities since 2014.
Research supports the safety case. A study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that after DC implemented speed cameras, the proportion of vehicles exceeding the speed limit by more than 10 mph dropped by 82 percent at camera locations. Mean traffic speeds declined by 14 percent compared to control sites in Baltimore where cameras were not installed.
Critics respond that the safety statistics are misleading. Some research has found that red light cameras can increase rear-end collisions as drivers brake suddenly to avoid triggering a citation. The Post reported that in the years after DC first installed cameras in 1999, crashes at camera locations more than doubled.
What It Means for Maryland and Virginia Drivers
The majority of DC camera tickets go to out-of-state drivers. If you commute through DC from Maryland or Virginia, you are disproportionately affected by the current system — and would be disproportionately affected by any changes.
DC uses reciprocity agreements to enforce payment across state lines. Maryland residents with unpaid DC camera tickets can have a hold placed on their vehicle registration through the Maryland MVA; Virginia drivers face the same mechanism. This cross-state enforcement is one reason why ignoring DC tickets is a particularly bad idea for suburban commuters.
If Congress were to ban DC's cameras, the immediate impact would be the elimination of roughly 540 enforcement points across the District. Speed limits would remain the same, but enforcement would revert entirely to police officers — a challenge given that DC police staffing declined 13 percent between 2018 and 2023.
Where Things Stand
The Stop DC CAMERA Act has cleared the House Oversight Committee, but several hurdles remain before it could become law. House leadership would need to schedule a floor vote, and the bill could face a filibuster in the Senate. Of the 20 bills that passed out of the Oversight Committee during this Congress, only about half have reached a full House vote.
The DOT's proposal could be folded into the broader surface transportation bill, which would give it a different legislative path — but also make it subject to the same negotiations and compromises that shape any major infrastructure legislation.
DC officials are fighting both efforts aggressively. In a letter to Congress, Mayor Bowser and the DC Council urged members to vote against the proposal, framing it as federal overreach into local governance.
Meanwhile, some House Democrats expressed concern during committee debate about the scope of data collected by traffic cameras, suggesting that national regulation might be appropriate — even as they voted against Congress dictating DC's local policy.
What to Watch For
This story is still developing. The key milestones to watch:
- Whether House leadership schedules a full floor vote on the Stop DC CAMERA Act
- Whether the DOT's camera ban survives as part of the surface transportation bill
- How the Senate responds — particularly whether a filibuster blocks the measure
- Whether DC takes any preemptive steps to restructure or scale back its program
For now, the cameras remain operational, and tickets are still being issued and enforced across state lines. If you drive through DC, the practical advice has not changed: know the speed limits, watch for cameras, and pay your tickets promptly. But the political landscape around automated enforcement in the nation's capital is more volatile than it has been in two decades.
We will continue to update this story as the legislation moves forward.
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