Bridgeport, West Virginia Speed Traps

This heavily travelled, sometimes congrested area of the interstate is patrolled by Bridgeport and Clarksburg WV City Police officers in a contractural agreement with the WV State Police and WV Department of Highways.

The eight-mile stretch of Federal HIghway is evenly divided between the two towns and features poorly marked speed limit “reductions” from 70 mph to 65 mph. Motorists coming South have most likely been travelling at a speed of 75mph since entering West Virginia from the Pennsylvania or Maryland borders…the same applies to those travelling North. Coming South you hit the reduced limit at the 124 mile marker, going North it’s at the 117. Drivers are not anticipating a “Speed Trap” on an interstate highway. City Cop cars sit in the median and since they do not look like State Police vehicles many drivers do not pay them much attention, not knowing that the Cities are now patrolling the interstates.

So they get a ticket for going 10 miles over the limit…a large fine and points off your license. Since the two cities began running radar on this stretch of highway – each has built multi-million-dollar, brand new ‘municipal’ buildings – yet neither city pays for maintaining the highway, or even removing snow in the winter. That comes out of the pockets of Federal taxpayers. The cities simply issue tickets and collect the fines.

Speed limit is 40 which is unreasonable due to the fact that the incline on the hill is the highest allowed by the highway department. Going down hill you have to hold your brakes continuously and going up hill you have to travel so slow that it’s hard to make it up the hill. This is a new by pass route to avoid getting on and off the Interstate.