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Virginia's seven red light camera programs are officially shut down.

As of today, any city issuing a red light camera ticket in the state of Virginia is in violation of the law. The legislature earlier this year declined to reauthorize photo enforcement bringing experiment which began ten years ago to an end. Camera programs in Alexandria, Fairfax City and County, Vienna and Virginia Beach have officially ceased operation. Arlington had been the first to turn off its cameras on June 15. Only Falls Church will keep cameras operating to monitor traffic and count "violations," but they are not allowed to photograph motorists or issue tickets.

City officials in the Northern Virginian communities will be lobbying for a reinstatement of the state's red light camera law, but members of the state House of Delegates have been consistently unimpressed with the performance of cameras having turned back several attempts to extend and preserve the program. Legislators pointed to the recent study by sponsored by the Virginia Department of Transportation which concluded, "The cameras are correlated with an increase in total injury crashes, with the increase being between 7% and 24%" as a primary reason for rejecting the devices.

Eight years ago, Fairfax became the first Virginia city to issue a photo ticket. Since then, six additional jurisdictions issued hundreds of thousands of tickets, generating millions in profit for camera vendor ACS, which held four contracts, as well as Nestor with two and Redflex with one. Most of the cities had reached the point of profitability in their programs, though they claim not to have made much money after startup costs were considered. The cities advocated an increase in the red light running fine amount of $50, which would have made the program extremely profitable. The top camera fine in the country is California's $361 red light camera citation and the $1000 fine for a second speed camera offense in Illinois.