City Pilots New Speed Sensors On LED Lights

Saint John and its electric utility are using cutting-edge technology to collect speed and traffic data through a new pilot project.

The city and Saint John Energy have partnered with Liveable Cities, a division of LED Roadway Lighting, to install speed sensors on LED lights.

Traffic engineer Tim O’Reilly said the sensors have been installed at 10 locations throughout the city.

“We selected the 10 locations across the city based on some community input in terms of concerns of speeding across the city,” said O’Reilly. “We also wanted to make sure that they were dispersed in different parts of the community as well as on different types of streets.”

It is the first time the city has used this type of technology to monitor speed and count vehicles, he said.

O’Reilly said the data will help make decisions around investments and improvements to traffic management plans, among other things.

“If there are trends in the city in terms of speeding, we’ll be able to use that to identify those trends on the specific streets,” he said. “We can identify potentially those streets that might warrant some level of traffic calming. We’ll also supply that information to our police force for enforcement purposes if there is an issue with speeding on the streets.”

While the sensors will be collect data related to the number of vehicles and how fast they are going, O’Reilly said they will not collect any identifying information.

There is also no cost for the city to take part in the six-month pilot project, said O’Reilly.

“In fact, the supplier is also supplying materials free to Saint John Energy,” he said.

O’Reilly did not rule out potentially purchasing some of the sensors depending on how well the pilot project goes.

Liveable Cities has partnered with Saint John Energy in the past to supply LED area and street lights.

As part of an earlier 2020 project, funded by the Government of Canada’s Low Carbon Economy Challenge to combat climate change, the utility replaced close to 1,700 existing outdoor area and street lights with high-efficiency LEDs.