The Motor Enforcement, Accident Reduction effort, referred to as Project M.E.A.R., will include officers from Virginia State Police along with the Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach police departments. The Portsmouth Sheriff’s Office also is participating.

Throughout the year, law-enforcement agencies work together on projects to increase enforcement on roads, track down people wanted on warrants and to identify criminal activity in undercover operations.

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I counted about 8 on I-64 between Greenbrier Parkway and Indian River Road today at lunch, so watch yourself out there.

The effort represents the next phase of Operation Air, Land and Speed, whose purpose, according to a VSP press release, is “to save lives by preventing traffic fatalities and reminding drivers to buckle up and slow down through high visibility and strict enforcement.”

This will be the second time the enforcement campaign has targeted I-64, I-264, -464 and I-664 in the Hampton Roads area. A similar effort in July yielded 3,303 violations during a two-day period. According to the state police, there were 1,684 speeders stopped, 298 reckless drivers cited, five impaired drivers arrested and 189 seat belt violations written up. The project also resulted in 21 drug or felony arrests.

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Angela Faye Garner, 43, of Bradley Place, was charged with two counts of altering and forging a vehicle registration, one count of forging public records and one count of unlawfully obtaining documents from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) , on Jan. 22, Hampton police spokeswoman Cpl. Allison Good said.

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A bill introduced last week in the General Assembly quietly seeks to eliminate a significant motorist protection built into Virginia’s existing red light camera law. The proposal of a pair of Democratic state delegates representing Virginia Beach, Joseph F. Bouchard and Robert W. Mathieson, would delete just three words from that statute, but the change would have wide-ranging effects. Under current law,
cities that want to install traffic cameras must first submit a detailed engineering justification to state transportation experts.

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“A locality shall submit a list of intersections to the Virginia Department of Transportation for final approval,” Virginia Code Section 15.2-968.1(J) states.

House Bill 2416 would delete the phrase “for final approval,”eliminating oversight by the Virginia department of Transportation (VDOT) entirely. Many lawmakers reluctantly voted in 2007 to allow the
operation of red light cameras only after a handful of provisions were added to ensure municipalities did not simply install automated ticketing machines as a means of obtaining easy revenue. To date, the
most powerful of these provisions has been this oversight power which has already been exercised in turning down proposals by the cities of Virginia Beach and Leesburg as unsafe.

VDOT has been careful regarding red light cameras because its own studies in 2005 and 2007 showed that accidents increased significantly at the intersections where red light cameras were operational in Virginia. Because VDOT does not share in the revenue generated by a camera, unlike a municipality and its private vendor, lawmakers saw the agency’s participation as an essential third-party check on municipal designs.

VDOT has also been burned in the past by aggressive participation in local red light camera programs. In 1999, the agency shortened the yellow signal duration at a Fairfax County intersection by 1.5 seconds just four days after county officials signed a contract to install red light cameras. Accidents and violations increased dramatically. When VDOT lengthened the signal back to 5.5 seconds a year later, accidents and violations dropped immediately and decisively.

Shortened yellows are the key to the financial success of red light camera programs. Confidential documents from the private vendor now operating as Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) show that employees were only allowed to install red light cameras at intersections with yellow times of “less than four seconds” and “downhill approaches”. A Texas Transportation Institute study confirmed that when the yellow light timing was increased one second above the bare minimum amount recommended by the ITE formula, accidents dropped 40 percent.

Bouchard and Mathieson’s proposal would give Virginia Beach and other municipalities the freedom to ignore any engineering improvements –especially lengthened yellow timings — recommended by VDOT.

A member of the Virginia House of Delegates last week introduced legislation that would create a system to track the driving habits of Virginia motorists, imposing a tax on every mile driven. Delegate David Poisson (D-Loudoun) argues that his measure should be adopted by the legislature’s 2009 session because he believes gas tax revenue is dwindling.

“Inflation and escalating construction costs have severely eroded the purchasing power of fuel-tax revenue,” Poisson said in a statement. “At the same time, tax receipts are dropping as soaring gas prices and a weak economy reduce traffic volume. When people do drive, it is in more fuel-efficient cars, which only makes our revenue problems worse. Clearly, we can’t continue this way.”

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This free service is part of the Virginia State Police Help Eliminate Auto Theft (HEAT) Program. VIN numbers will be permanently etched on the vehicle or motorcycle. Having VIN numbers marked on the vehicles steers thieves away. VIN etching takes away any potential profit thieves may make. VIN etching is simple, fast, safe and won’t mar the look of the vehicle or motorcycle. In addition to the etching, officers will be on hand to educate vehicle and motorcycle owners on how to prevent auto theft in their communities.

In 1995 the Virginia State Legislature authorised red light cameras for a 10-year period concluding 1 July, 2005. Commencing in September 2004 through 1 July 2005 and resulting from a successful competitive tender, Redflex and Virginia Beach implemented a highly successful red light camera programme that reduced red light running crashes by 40 per cent at the monitored intersections.

In 2005, the Virginia General Assembly did not renew this enabling legislation and as a result, effective 1 July 2005, all municipalities across Virginia were required to terminate their respective contracts and indefinitely shut down their programmes.

In 2007 the General Assembly enacted new legislation allowing communities to implement comprehensive red light camera programmes, with cities being allowed to enforce one intersection for every 10,000 residents.

As Karen Finley, CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems explains, Redflex has been an active leader in legislative initiatives in more than half of the 21 states in which it operates. To ensure the industry’s successful propagation, the company has made a strategic investment in a team of
legislative experts with a keen knowledge of working the delicate, formal, legislative processes and grass root efforts.

“When the original 1995 Virginia photo enforcement legislation was not renewed, we implemented a focused legislative effort: two-years later, these efforts were successfully received by the Virginia General Assembly as referenced by the state-wide enablement of photo enforcement programmes,” Finley said. “As the largest municipality in Virginia, it was a great validation to be awarded the Virginia Beach photo enforcement contract through two separate competitive tenders at two
points in time; firstly in 2004 and more recently in 2008,” she added.

In June, the US Department of Transportation created a first-of-its-kind $1.6 billion financing package that consisted of tax-free bonds, loans and state taxpayer grants to support the project that will add a pair of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes to the Interstate 495 Capital Beltway just outside of Washington, DC. To this amount, Transurban only added $349 million of its own capital — less than the cost of interest — toward the construction of the toll lane.

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