The debate in Virginia about using cameras to catch stoplight scofflaws will continue in the state’s 2005 legislative session.

State Sen. Jeannemarie Davis, R-Fairfax, has withdrawn a bill carried over from the session that ended in early March to allow every Virginia locality to use “photo red” systems. She pulled the measure after determining she didn’t have the votes to get it through the House Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee.

Davis, however, said she would introduce a new bill before the General Assembly reconvenes in January.

The House panel met Nov. 15 to consider more than a dozen bills left over from the previous session. The committee, dominated by rural lawmakers, has traditionally been hostile to photo red bills.

The monitoring systems are in use in Virginia Beach and six northern Virginia communities: Alexandria, Fairfax City, Falls Church, Vienna and Arlington and Fairfax counties. The law that allows such programs has a sunset provision to expire July 1, 2005.

Davis said she plans to introduce a new proposal that would lift the sunset and let localities with cameras continue to use them.

But opponents of monitoring systems said there are other ways to improve safety without snapping photos.

Eric Skrum, a spokesman for the National Motorists Association, suggested improving lights and lines at intersections, extending the yellow light time and re-evaluating the timing of lights to consider drivers’ actual speed rather than the posted speed limits.

Skrum pointed to a AAA project in Detroit in which such changes were implemented. Crashes decreased 47 percent in the first two years at four test intersections.

“This is where state and local governments should be investing their resources, instead of installing cameras designed to further fleece motorists,” Skrum told The Washington Post.

In Virginia, AAA found that more than 70 percent of drivers surveyed in the state approve of the cameras, AAA spokesman John Townsend said.

“They feel that red-light cameras make the road safer,” Townsend said.

“But some things they don’t like,” he said. “They think they’re not being installed for public safety uses but to raise money. They support it, but there’s a mistrust of the cameras.”

Delegate James Scott, D-Fairfax, a member of the House panel, told The Post the issue breaks down as “urban vs. not urban.”

“Some of the people in rural areas just don’t particularly like government having a role in this whole arena,” he said. “They have apprehensions about whether or not local governments can handle this kind of authority.

“I would hope the Legislature would take its nanny hat off and let the jurisdictions do what’s in their best interest.”

As Virginia lawmakers prepare to do battle over monitoring systems, the city of Philadelphia is preparing to launch its own program.

The Philadelphia Parking Authority chose three accident-prone intersections to become the first in the state to get red-light cameras.

The authority chose intersections along Roosevelt Boulevard for the cameras; the intersections at Grant Avenue, Red Lion Road and Cottman Avenue are among the worst in the city for accidents, according to state statistics.

The state Transportation Secretary must approve the choices, but assuming that happens, those three intersections should see red-light cameras by January.

In all, there are nine intersections in the city slated for cameras. The three intersections on Roosevelt Boulevard were among the nine. The six other intersections, which had far fewer accidents, did not make the cut.

“We’re not recommending them at this time,” Richard Dickson Jr., the Parking Authority official who heads the red-light camera program, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. Rather, he said, the authority was considering six or seven intersections not on the state list.

Dickson declined to name the alternative intersections.