Midland Council Taps StreetLight for Help With Traffic Calming Plan

Summary of story by Derek Howard, Toronto Star, November 23, 2021

In a Midland council meeting, a traffic calming policy report was presented to explore potential strategies for reducing speed and increasing safety and efficiency on local roads. According to the Toronto Star, this long-awaited report comes in response to complaints by “residents, commuters, and pedestrians who find some of the town’s busiest streets tough to travel.”

Previous traffic calming measures like those implemented on Fourth Street have not addressed all resident challenges, the report acknowledged. But because many traffic calming techniques are costly and obstructive, the council hoped to find ways to isolate high-priority areas for investment.

That’s where StreetLight would come in, council staff suggested:

“Within the report, staff recommended implementing transportation analytic company Streetlight Data software as a means of passively collecting big data, such as cellular phones and GPS, to isolate and analyze which areas were most in need of traffic calming measures.” 

“Within the report, staff recommended implementing transportation analytic company Streetlight Data software as a means of passively collecting big data, such as cellular phones and GPS, to isolate and analyze which areas were most in need of traffic calming measures.”  — Derek Howard, Toronto Star

Vehicle speed Metrics broken out by day part could be particularly useful in implementing traffic calming measures that rely on enforcement such as community safe zones, council member Sobil noted. By determining when and where most speeding occurs, enforcement of these safe zones could be better targeted so that drivers don’t simply ignore posted safe zone signs. It could also allow more safe zones to be created without stretching enforcement resources too thin.

Read the full Toronto Star story here.

Visualization of October 2021 Traffic Volume on Road Segments in San Francisco