Alexandria is hoping for more authority to regulate the use of autonomous vehicles on city streets.
At a meeting last week, the Transportation Commission discussed legislative priorities for the upcoming year. These are topics that the Transportation Commission is hoping the City’s representatives will push for during the legislative session. One of the big transportation topics on the horizon, the Commission said, is regulation of autonomous vehicles.
The staff recommendation is that the legislature define autonomous vehicles and allow localities to draft their own regulations on them.
“There’s a strong push to define autonomous vehicles to provide localities the authority to regulate,” staff said. “Virginia is a Dillon Rule state, meaning local governments cannot regulate autonomous vehicles without state approval… That’s why we need to define it through this process.”
Transportation Commissioners said, in general, that Alexandria would like more leeway when it comes to legislating automation, from cars to traffic cameras. While Alexandria installed some of its first speed cameras last year in school zones, the Alexandria Police Department said that 1/3 of tickets from those cameras have gone unpaid.
“We need to stand at two fronts: we need to stop getting in the way of performance-measurement, data-driven based automated speed camera and red light enforcement camreas,” said Transportation Commission chair Melissa McMahon, “and allow jurisdictions to allow revenue to pay for the work and go into their general fund.”
Hillary Orr, deputy director of Transportation Planning and Mobility, said Alexandria is handicapped in its automated enforcement compared to D.C.
“D.C. is doing a lot with automated enforcement that we’re not allowed to do,” Orr said. “It goes beyond just speeding too, there’s school bus arm cameras, there’s other automated enforcement it would be nice to have the authority to implement if we chose to for safety reasons.”
