The Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate has approved a bill that would allow the City of Seat­tle to enforce pro­hi­bi­tions against “block­ing the box” by motorists at high­ly con­gest­ed inter­sec­tions using auto­mat­ed traf­fic safe­ty cameras.

Sen­ate Bill 5789, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Marko Liias and strong­ly cham­pi­oned by cospon­sor Sen­a­tor Joe Nguyen, received the sup­port of a con­sti­tu­tion­al major­i­ty of the Sen­ate a few min­utes ago.

The roll call was as follows:

SSB 5789
Auto­mo­bile traf­fic safe­ty cameras
Sen­ate vote on 3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/18/2020

Yeas: 25; Nays: 21; Excused: 3

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tor Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hobbs, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Mul­let, Nguyen, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Stan­ford, Takko, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tor Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Erick­sen, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, Muz­za­ll, O’Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Short, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, Walsh, War­nick, Well­man, Wil­son (Lyn­da), Zeiger

Excused: Sen­a­tor For­tu­na­to, McCoy, Sheldon

The bill passed with a bare major­i­ty of twen­ty-five in favor, as two Democ­rats vot­ed nay: Kevin Van De Wege and Lisa Well­man. Repub­li­cans Phil For­tu­na­to and Tim Shel­don missed the vote, as did Sen­a­tor John McCoy. The remain­ing Democ­rats vot­ed aye, while the Repub­li­cans col­lec­tive­ly vot­ed nay.

Sen­ate com­mit­tee staff have ably sum­ma­rized the pro­vi­sions of the bill as follows:

• Allows cities with a pop­u­la­tion over 500,000 [in oth­er words, Seat­tle… no oth­er city has half a mil­lion inhab­i­tants] to cre­ate a pilot pro­gram in a defined area with­in the city, expand­ing the use of auto­mat­ed traf­fic safe­ty cam­eras to detect and issue infrac­tion notices for vio­la­tions relat­ed to: stop­ping at an inter­sec­tion or cross­walk or when traf­fic is obstruct­ed, using pub­lic trans­porta­tion only lanes, and stop­ping or trav­el­ing in a restrict­ed lane.
• Requires fifty per­cent of the penal­ty monies be deposit­ed into the new state Coop­er Jones Active Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Account and fifty per­cent to be spent by the city on trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture mobil­i­ty improve­ments for per­sons with disabilities.
• Lim­its the infrac­tion fine to $75.
• Requires that a city [again, effec­tive­ly just Seat­tle] report back to the Leg­is­la­ture on the pro­gram, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the loca­tions of the cam­eras, total warn­ings and infrac­tions issued, and rec­om­men­da­tions on use of auto­mat­ed cam­eras to detect the list­ed violations.

SSB 5789 failed to receive a vote in the cham­ber last year, so today’s action is an impor­tant devel­op­ment for the bill. The House com­pan­ion, HB 1793, has received two floor votes: one last year and one again this year on Jan­u­ary 30th, so the bil­l’s prospects in the House would seem to be very good.

The prob­lem these bills are attempt­ing to solve can best be under­stood by watch­ing this video from our friends at Root­ed In Rights.

TRANSCRIPT: 

VANESSA: Hi, I’m Vanessa.

CLARK: I’m Clark.

VANESSA: We both live in Seattle.

CLARK: We both use wheelchairs.

VANESSA: And we’re both tired of these [BLEEP]
cars block­ing the [BLEEP] intersections!

[upbeat music]

(Clark and Vanes­sa attempt to cross the street but a van blocks the cross­walk. Then, they nav­i­gate around a huge char­ter bus block­ing the cross­walk. Next, they attempt to weave through sev­er­al cars block­ing an intersection.)

VANESSA: Seri­ous­ly?

CLARK: I don’t know.

VANESSA: Try not to die, please.

[BLEEP]

CLARK: For pedes­tri­ans who can’t step up
onto the side­walk, a blocked curb ramp means

we have to ride in the street through traffic
just to get out of an intersection.

[music con­tin­ues]

The real­i­ty is, when you block the box,
you block us out.

VANESSA: It’s our access, and it’s our safety.

CLARK: Bet­ter enforce­ment at intersections
will make our streets safer for everyone.

As not­ed above, the bill would also allow cam­eras to be used to enforce rules pro­hibit­ing motorists from dri­ving in tran­sit-only lanes, which is a relat­ed prob­lem that the City of Seat­tle has been try­ing to address.

Traf­fic safe­ty cam­eras are cur­rent­ly used in Seat­tle to catch peo­ple who blow through red lights at inter­sec­tions and speed in school zones.

Traf­fic safe­ty cam­eras could become more preva­lent in the city if this bill becomes law, although not nec­es­sar­i­ly ubiq­ui­tous, because the bill only autho­rizes a pilot pro­gram. Bet­ter enforce­ment is clear­ly need­ed, because dri­vers are not respect­ing users of oth­er modes as they should and as the law requires them to.