Regester Ave. Has Needed Speed Camera For Years, Resident Says

Juliet Fisher has spent six years trying to get some kind of traffic calming outside her home on Regester Avenue, and she has the pictures of car accidents to prove it.

Fisher is counting a win this week, as Baltimore County policethat a speed camera was is in the works for Regester Avenue, near Stoneleigh Elementary School.

For the past six years, Fisher and neighbors have been clamoring for some sort of action on Regester. Drivers, she said, treat the street as a speedway. She recalled driving at the speed limit several times and being passed by drivers who cross the double yellow line.

However, county officials told her the street was too narrow for most traffic engineering fixes, like traffic islands or speed humps. Police would be in the area occasionally, but the speeders kept coming, Fisher said.

"If we could get people used to the idea of not treating the street like this it would be so extremely wonderful to feel that people respected this street as a residential street," Fisher said. "It's fairly narrow. It's not Northern Parkway, yet people drive at the speeds they would if it were Northern Parkway."

Fisher said other parents, and even crossing guards, have shared concerns with her. And since she moved to Regester nine years ago, her car has been struck twice and her husband's car has been struck once by drivers who were speeding.

Last year, Fisher went around to neighbors on Regester asking them to email police to request a speed camera. She said about "50 to 60 percent" of them did.

The speed cameras aren't a round-the-clock fix—they will only run between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on weekdays. Once the camera is activated, warning notices will be issued for the first 30 days, then $40 citations after that.

The new camera will also be near a heavily used crossing for students walking between Stoneleigh Elementary and the Anneslie neighborhood.

"It's a little bit of a no-brainer if you're putting speed cameras close to the crosswalk where kids are," Fisher said.

But, as some Patch readers , Stoneleigh will be closed for all of next school year for a . During this time, Stoneleigh students will be shuttled to the old building on York Road.

According to county law, speed cameras may only be deployed in school zones (within a half-mile of a school). So if there's no school, is it still a school zone?

Apparently so. Police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said police "had been talking to the school system about the closure of the school and what activities are going to go on at the school during that closure."

That includes activities on the school's fields and pickups for students who will need to be bused from the neighborhood to Carver, Armacost said.

Fisher said she understands that some residents have issues with the idea of speed cameras, but she said that compared to the alternatives, she's all for it.

"If you have an issue with it, don't drive down the street, or if you're going to drive down the street, don't speed," she said.

In addition to the camera near Stoneleigh, police announced plans to install a camera on Cromwell Bridge Road, outside . A camera outside on Goucher Boulevard was originally slated to be activated today, but that date was .