WMAL Interview - JOHN TOWNSEND - 03.10.17

INTERVIEW — JOHN TOWNSEND – AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman

DC issued ‘unparalleled’ number of traffic tickets last year. WASHINGTON — The number of photo-enforced tickets given to drivers in the District skyrocketed during the last fiscal year to more than 1.1 million, according to new figures released Thursday by AAA Mid-Atlantic. There were 1,101,769 photo-enforced tickets — including speed, red-light and stop-sign camera tickets — handed out in D.C. during the 2016 fiscal year. That marks a massive year-over-year increase of nearly 70 percent. The District’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. “The bulk of those tickets were speed camera tickets,” said AAA spokesman John Townsend. “We estimate that the District issued more than one million speed camera tickets, the highest total on a yearly basis in the District’s history.” The spike in photo-enforced citations helped push the number of overall tickets in the nation’s capital to an all-time high. “The District issued an unparalleled number of tickets last year,” Townsend said. Over the course of the year, drivers received a total of 2,760,482 citations. Those tickets totaled $300 million