Montgomery County to rebuild automated traffic‑enforcement system, emphasizes data‑driven placement and privacy safeguards

Montgomery County officials told a joint Transportation & Environment and Public Safety committee on Dec. 8 that the county paused its automated traffic‑enforcement program in July after questions from the inspector general and has moved quickly to rebuild the system.

Assistant Chief Dave McBain said the county made “the hard decision, to go dark” to ensure the program could be restructured and run at an acceptable level. He described broad interagency work to get equipment, procurement and software in place and said the system would be back online sooner than later.

Chris Depri, the county’s director of automated traffic, described the new vendor arrangement with Vitronic, the manufacturer and software provider that will supply portable trailer units and replace fixed poles over time. “Vitronic actually opened up a corporate headquarters here in Montgomery County,” Depri said, noting the county will move from vans to self‑contained trailers that include fire suppression and surveillance systems.

Officials said the rebuild focuses on three priorities: deploying evidence‑based enforcement at high‑incident corridors, improving transparency through a public dashboard, and protecting privacy in images. Depri said the county plans a near‑real‑time map showing camera locations and violation metrics; Assistant Chief McBain emphasized that deployments are determined by data, not political requests: “We look at the data. We do speed studies … and we put those cameras where they're needed.”

Staff described deployment mechanics: replacing 51 fixed school‑zone pole systems will require construction, so portable trailer units will temporarily serve school locations during the infrastructure swap. The county also plans to expand the number of covered locations on the Vision Zero/high‑incident network once local enabling regulations, signage and vendor installation are complete.

Program constraints include state law and procedural steps. Staff reiterated an operational threshold used in site selection—that about 85% of vehicles at a candidate location must be traveling at least 12 mph over the speed limit as a baseline for initiating a study—along with other environmental considerations (school proximity, sight lines, curves). They also noted archaic state requirements for public notice in a newspaper of circulation before activating some new sites.

On privacy, staff said vendor software can degrade or anonymize images so that crosswalk users are not archived in a way that supports facial recognition; officials said they have sought certification from vendors on that point.

Council members raised constituent concerns about specific corridors, including Route 198 and University Boulevard. Staff said some approved locations exist near Peach Orchard and that industrial or commercial zoning and state statutes can restrict placement on certain stretches. Officials asked council members to continue providing location‑level requests offline while the county finalizes local regulations and signage.

There were no formal votes during the briefing. Staff said they would be ready to activate pre‑studied locations as soon as the county completes the regulatory and signage steps and installs equipment.

The committee moved next to Safe Streets Act implementation. The meeting adjourned after the second presentation.