SCOTTSDALE, AZ — The City of Scottsdale is activating new camera technology at Scottsdale Rd. and Camelback. It plans to track everything that passes by, with a goal of making safety improvements later on.
Scottsdale resident Steven Johnson walks across Scottsdale and Camelback Roads every day. His biggest complaint?
“Traffic,” says Johnson.
That’s one thing the City of Scottsdale is hoping to address through a year-long pilot program with local tech company Sensagrate. ABC15 spoke with the founder about the goal of the program.
"To analyze the movements of pedestrians, their interactions with vehicles and measuring traffic flow and incidents such as near-misses," says Darryl Keeton, founder of Sensagrate. "That will help improve safety and help them redesign that corridor.”
The city will receive a count of the number of vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists that pass by. With the data, they hope to improve the planning and designing of the roadway and ultimately, prevent crashes and deaths. Mayor David Ortega says this will add to what is already in the works.
"Scottsdale has a very integrated camera, surveillance, traffic monitoring system," Ortega says. "It's all real-time. We are upgrading the entire Old Town-area, from McDowell all the way to Westbrook, so that our traffic engineers and our safety police know where there are accidents or things of concern."
The second site that will be monitored through the pilot program is Camelback Road between Buckboard and Saddlebag.
Sensagrate says they are working on developing their technology to also potentially record incidents, like crashes.
