WASHINGTON — Olney is a small town, with a population around 31,000, but it has some of the busiest speed cameras in the area.
“It’s a small, whistle-stop town; it’s not even incorporated, but yet it has more (speed) cameras per square inch than any other community in Montgomery County,” says John Townsend, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic.
Thirteen photo-enforcement cameras are concentrated in Olney, but for good reason, the Montgomery County police say.
“There is a large speeding problem in the Olney community,” says Capt. Tom Didone, director of the Traffic Division. Didone says speed cameras have successfully slowed motorists on their approaches to other upper-Montgomery communities including Damascus and Poolesville, but not Olney.
“In Olney, the amount of speeding continues to be high enough that we are leaving the cameras there,” Didone says.
One of the 13 Olney cameras is perched near St. Peter’s Church, and has become known as St. Peter’s camera.
“That’s the most prolific speed camera in Montgomery County,” Townsend says. “This camera, according to the research, has generated more speed-camera tickets than any other speed camera in Montgomery County and it’s the third most prolific camera in the entire Washington area,” Townsend says.
An Olney community task force has studied the matter, and community leaders say residents are divided. Some want more speed cameras; others feel they are being unfairly ticketed.
“The most troubling thing that I see is the lack of data transparency in the program,” says John Webster, president of the Greater Olney Civic Association. “We would love to know, out of all the citations in Olney, how many are going to local Olney residents, versus the number going to pass-through traffic,” he says.
There’s also been some suspicion in the community that the speed limit on Route 108 in Olney was lowered from 40 mph to 30 mph before a camera installation.
“Some people think the speed limit was lowered in order to generate more tickets,” Townsend says. Not so, says Didone: “The Montgomery County Police Department has never requested a speed limit to be lowered for the speed camera program. In fact, if we know a speed limit has changed we will not install a speed camera for six months.”
Community leaders are also concerned about some unintended consequences of the speed cameras. “What’s happening is, traffic is flowing into the neighborhoods to avoid the cameras,” Webster says. Some residents in the neighborhoods are now requesting even more speed cameras.
The police say the camera deployment in Olney is fair and tickets are being fairly issued.
“Olney has the highest population of violations because people are not slowing down,” Didone says; “going slow is the only way we’re going to prevent collisions.”
