Have you shrugged off any thought of ever paying them because you're a non-DC resident and thought "Meh, what - all they can do is send me nasty letters in the mail."

Well, the game is about to change.


D.C. is owed $355MM in traffic ticket fines.
$141MM - MD Residents
$76MM - VA Residents

Today, the city council voted to establish a Judgment Collections unit whose sole purpose will be to collect on these fines by filing civil judgments in your home jurisdiction.

Collections activities will include filing a lien on your home and garnishment of wages.
They are intent on being as aggressive as possible.

The bill passed the 1st preliminary council vote this afternoon, 8-5.
On to the 2nd council vote which I believe is later this month. If it passes, Mayor Gray will sign it into law and the unit should be established sometime in 2012.

 

Impressive that so many people don't pay fines.

 

That's because DC is out of control with the way the ticket and enforce. It's a complete racket.
Instead of Cops pulling you over for going 4-5 over (a la NOVA - especially Fairfax & Herndon), DC privately contracts out their parking enforcement - who in turn are bonused(!) on the number of tickets they write.

DC will play the "gotcha" game of changing the street parking times in a zone without warning.
Or upping the fee time limits.
Or ticket you for parking on the same side of the street AFTER you moved you car because free time limit expired.
Or ticket you for parking on street cleaning day when no street cleaner was within a half mile of your street.
Or ticket you for parking at a broken meter.
Or ticket you for parking with 15 feet of a crosswalk (good luck trying to guessimate 15ft since it isn't marked)

Add to this the increasing saturation of hair trigger speed and traffic cameras which again, are not run or owned by the city. The entire program and equipment is owned and run by Lockheed. The agreement is Lockheed gets 50% of all ticket revenue.

To wit, if you don't answer any ticket within 30 days - they double the fine and add $5 and you lose the right to contest, regardless if the send the f'ing thing to the wrong address. Which is what happened to me 3 years ago when I found out I suddenly had $450 worth of tickets ($225 doubled).
Why? Because they were sending it to an NE address with the same street and house number instead of NW.

 

Solution - metro to dc or take a cab seriously heist is right dc is outta control w tickets it's a downright racket! Since moving to bmore I am not on dc as much... It was my old stomping ground for several years tho so I know about the ticketing fiasco there !!

 

Just one more reason NOT to go to DC.

You Marrylanders need to pay up!

 

Dc = ghey!

 

They sure pulled a "heist" on you! I bet that "held up" your finances a bit. Hopefully you don't get "robbed" again, otherwise you'll have to "stick up" for yourself against those "thieves".

 

^^^<ba-dum-dum : cymbal crash>

 

I always take the metro in, no worried for me! DC and the gov get enough of my cash, I don't want to give them any more.

 

The wife and I got $250 worth of speed camera tickets in one month when we lived there. The worst was a $100 fine for doing 42mph on a 25 mph zone. The road was New York Ave in NE where it's 6 lanes and no turns onto or off of the road. Anyone driving that road knows that you have to brake to be at 25. DC sux.

 

^^^Yup, that New York Avenue on both sides of the Arboretium is utter bullsh*t. They set up a speed camera just as NY Ave becomes Rte 50 which is a highway!
That's clearly ridiculous - you have a 6 lane road that is a highway and suddenly becomes a fast "local" road and drops the speed limited 30+ mph in under a mile.

 

Yisser...V1 blows up at that spot! Same thing w NY Ave up over the bridge there...

 

There's a 35mph camera set-up just before the hotel in the West Bound lane after you pass under the overpass.

As a matter of fact, DC just activated another 19 cameras 3 months ago.
New speed cameras activated in D.C. - WTOP.com

WASHINGTON - D.C. Police have flipped the switch on 19 new speed cameras in the District.

The cameras have been placed on sites where a high number of crashes and calls for police service have occurred.

A 30-day warning period is currently in effect for the cameras. Police will issue violations starting Oct. 1.

The locations of the cameras are:

1900 block of Independence Avenue SE east bound - speed limit 25 mph
Military Road 0.2 miles west of the 16th Street ramp NW southwest bound - speed limit 35 mph
Military Road 0.1 miles prior to 17th Street NW northeast bound - speed limit 35 mph
1700 block of Rhode Island Avenue NE northeast bound - speed limit 30 mph
1800 block of Rhode Island Avenue NE southwest bound - speed limit 30 mph
4000 block of East Capitol Street NE west bound - speed limit 35 mph
4000 block of East Capitol Street SE east bound - speed limit 35 mph
800 block of Ridge Road SE southeast bound - speed limit 25 mph
600 block of Southern Avenue SE southwest bound - speed limit 30 mph
1400 block of Southern Avenue SE southwest bound - speed limit 30 mph
1900 block of Branch Avenue SE north bound - speed limit 25 mph
1900 block of Branch Avenue SE south bound - speed limit 25 mph
1100 block of Bladensburg Road NE northeast bound - speed limit 30 mph
1100 block of Bladensburg Road NE southwest bound - speed limit 30 mph
200 block of 19th Street SE north bound - speed limit 25 mph
4800 block of Connecticut Avenue NW northwest bound - speed limit 30 mph
4900 block of Connecticut Avenue NW southeast bound - speed limit 30 mph
600 block of Missouri Avenue NW northwest bound - speed limit 30 mph
600 block of Missouri Avenue NW southeast bound - speed limit 30 mph

 

Just an update. AAA released numbers on DC's ticket writing activity. Here are the high level points:

- 5,300 tickets written per day.
- 1.6MM tickets per year
- 100,000 more tickets written this year than last year.
- Average ticket range $25-100
- Potential revenue: $80.6MM

 

Yet another reason why I never set foot in that cesspool. Plenty of nice places to go in NoVa and Bethesda/Chevy Chase.....where you don't have to wear kevlar to feel safe.