Traffic cameras prove residents right all along
It’s a sad truism in traffic planning that most safety improvements only come after a pedestrian gets hit.
New video technology to be rolled out across Edmonton this summer promises to change that approach.
Safety officials first ran a trial this year at the top of Scona Road.
In two days, the video cameras captured enough nearmisses to prove residents were right about speeding and problematic sightlines at a dangerous crosswalk.
Past techniques required three years of collision data.
As soon as they saw the video, city officials approved new signage and advanced flashing lights for the pedestrian crossing this summer. Council also promised to keep the speed limit at 50 km/h, a contentious move on a recently widened road that’s already a sore spot for those caught by photo radar.
The road feels wide enough to go 60 km/h — 15 per cent of vehicles were already going more than 70 — but when vehicles speed up the hill, they contribute to a dangerous intersection at the top.
That is exactly what neighbours said would happen when the city proposed widening the road, said Coun. Ben Henderson, who is excited about the new video technology.
“People know a lot about their communities. Us thinking we know better than they do is producing these kind of mistakes,” he said.
“There have been other places where people say this isn’t safe and sure enough, something happens.”
University of British Columbia researcher Tarek Sayed has been developing this new approach since 2009. It is used in nearly a dozen countries. His team sets up video cameras capturing every angle of a road or intersection.
A computer scans the data, analyzes the trajectory of each person walking, driving or cycling, and picks out conflicts where road users were within three seconds of a collision before one of them changed course.
Sayed reviews those nearmisses to get an accurate assessment of why the problems are happening. His computer analysis is detailed enough to differentiate the gender of a pedestrian with 80 per cent accuracy and distinguish the gait of a senior from that of younger pedestrians.
“It’s a very powerful tool,” he said. “You get very detailed behaviour analysis. It can be used at any intersection or mid block.”
A simplified version that city safety engineers can use in-house is being refined on a project around Donald Massey Elementary-Junior High School and will likely be soon applied to more schools, said Gerry Shimko, head of Edmonton’s office of traffic safety.
“It will be a good opportunity for the public to really see the behaviour,” Shimko said. “It has tremendous potential.”
Peigi Rockwell, a Strathcona resident who was vocal about the dangers on Scona Road, welcomes the new approach, saying it felt like transportation engineers were hearing conflicting opinions from residents and commuters.
“These changes are exactly what we asked for years ago. With analytics, they confirmed our worries.”