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Riverdale Park council moves forward with planning for automated stop‑sign enforcement in school zones
Summary
Staff briefed the council on a stop‑sign automated enforcement pilot that recorded hundreds of stop‑sign violations per day; staff recommended ordinance amendments, a vendor contract with Obivia, and county approval steps; council asked for vendor data and evaluation plans before implementation.
Riverdale Park, Md. — Town staff gave the Riverdale Park Town Council a briefing on stop‑sign automated enforcement on July 7, presenting pilot results and a recommended sequence for adopting enforcement in school zones.
Police Chief Turner told the council the town’s pilot program (eight monitored intersections, with two additional locations added) recorded an average of 306 high‑danger violations per day and 1,427 medium‑danger violations per day, numbers Turner said underscore pedestrian‑safety risk in areas of high student traffic. “The pilot revealed an average of 306 high danger violations daily and 1,427 medium danger violations per day,” Turner said.
Turner outlined required steps for implementation: introduce and adopt an ordinance amending Chapter 64, hold a public hearing, authorize a sole‑source contract with Obivia for a solar‑powered enforcement system, submit a request for county approval (staff estimated a 4–8 week review period), and then implement enforcement. Turner said Obivia operates a solar camera system and provided staff the pilot data.
Council members raised implementation and evaluation questions. One member cautioned that engineering, not only enforcement, can be the long‑term fix and said automated enforcement risks becoming a revenue source rather than a behavior‑change tool. “It just generates revenue from it,” the council member said, urging careful evaluation of effectiveness and a broader approach to road design and safety.
Other council members and staff noted examples from nearby municipalities where the vendor provided data showing reductions in citations after deployment (one cited 50% fewer citations over four months). The council asked staff to obtain vendor breakdowns that separate high‑, medium‑, and low‑danger violations and to include accident data so the town can assess behavior changes, not just citation counts.
Town staff said they had a general consensus to continue and will work with the town attorney over the summer and return to the council after recess with draft ordinance language and fuller data from the vendor. No final ordinance or contract was approved at the July 7 meeting.
Next steps: staff to request detailed vendor data, draft ordinance language for public hearing, seek county approval and return to the council with an implementation timeline.
