D.C. officials pushed back Wednesday against a reported Department of Transportation proposal that threatens to cut funding for the city unless hundreds of traffic cameras are removed from its streets.
“Removing [traffic] cameras would endanger people in our community” and “mean cuts to everyday services,” Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in a statement. “We call on our federal partners to stand with us in prioritizing safety and respecting the District’s ability to govern our own streets.”
The proposal, as reported by Politico, would “prohibit the operation of automated traffic camera enforcement in the District of Columbia.” If passed by Congress, it could cause the city to lose hundreds of millions in revenue and strike at the heart of the city’s traffic safety efforts.
Bowser has raised her concerns with federal officials, according to a person familiar who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. D.C. Department of Transportation Director Sharon Kershbaum said she is “optimistic that this will get squared away and not end up with any sort of ban.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation declined to address the leaked proposal but said in a statement that the agency “is constantly examining a broad set of preliminary policy options on transportation matters.”
Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-North Carolina), who has pushed to ban speed cameras nationwide, said it came up at a Republican retreat Tuesday where lawmakers discussed policy proposals with President Donald Trump. It’s a way to “make an immediate impact” on affordability, he argued: “Speed cameras are 100 percent a cash grab straight out of the pockets of the American middle class.”
Republicans in Congress, led by Rep. Scott Perry (Pennsylvania), have repeatedly sought to ban the city from using automatic traffic enforcement cameras. Those efforts have not succeeded, but the Trump administration’s involvement could give the proposal more ammunition. Under the Constitution, Congress has oversight of the city and can block D.C. policies or funding. It’s a power lawmakers have been leveraging more often, starting with an override of D.C. policing laws during a 2023 crime wave and accelerating under the current Trump administration.
Although cameras generate significant city revenue, officials say their primary purpose is safety. For years traffic deaths in D.C. kept rising even though speeds fell where cameras were located. But D.C. leaders credit declining traffic deaths and major injuries in 2025 in part to a major expansion of the camera network.
“It’s an important and effective tool,” Kershbaum said. She noted that more than 20 states have traffic cameras and both Maryland and Virginia are expanding their use: “There really is a widespread support for camera enforcement.”
In the past year, the city also began suing drivers from other states who fail to pay their tickets.
“We have finally been able to make significant headway in holding dangerous drivers accountable,” said Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who wrote the legislation making those lawsuits possible. “This would be a horrible, absolutely horrible move, to take away something that actually makes D.C. streets safer.”
The District currently has 546 cameras in operation, but 210 of those are attached to buses and ticket drivers who block bus-only lanes. There are 208 stationary speed cameras, 56 red light cameras and 33 stop sign cameras. Fines range from $100 for going 11 to 15 miles over the speed limit to $500 for passing a school bus with flashing lights.
Traffic cameras generally poll well in the District and elsewhere, but local lawmakers and community activists have expressed concern that the burden of escalating fines falls too heavily on lower-income Black residents. Last year the city launched a pilot program offering reduced fines to people who receive food assistance.
A ban on cameras was included in a House appropriations bill last year, but Congress never passed it. In September, Perry successfully included an amendment to ban the cameras in an unrelated D.C. bill involving criminal justice, which advanced from the House Oversight Committee but has yet to get a vote from the full chamber.
At the time, the Bowser administration had estimated the provision would blow a $180 million hole in its fiscal 2026 budget. Between fiscal years 2023 and 2025, revenue the city raked in from the cameras has ranged from about $140 million to $267 million, according to the office of D.C.’s chief financial officer.
Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have tried to force numerous transportation policy changes since Trump took office, often by attempts to restrict or withhold funding.
House Republicans have sought to block D.C. from enforcing a law banning right turns on red at most intersections. In March, Bowser painted over the “Black Lives Matter” mural on 16th Street NW near the White House after a House Republican threatened to withhold federal transportation funds if she did not.
Under U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy, the U.S. Department of Transportation has used similar tactics to force policy changes in D.C. and elsewhere, but courts have blocked some of those efforts. A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled in November that a threat to withhold federal transportation funding from states that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement “blatantly violates” the Constitution. A federal court has also blocked his demand that New York City stop implementing congestion pricing.
After the removal of the Black Lives Matter mural, Duffy proclaimed that street art was unsafe and should be removed from all city roads. That has not happened. A long rainbow mural was painted on 15th Street during last summer’s World Pride.
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