New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) Commissioner Mike Flynn announced the use of new cutting-edge sensors to better understand how New Yorkers use their streets and to inform safer street design.
First piloted in 2023, these small, privacy-protective street activity sensors will count pedestrians, cyclists, buses and vehicles and assess patterns in how people use the streets. Sensors will be installed at approximately 80 additional locations across the five boroughs to accelerate data-driven street safety improvements.
"Safer street design starts with understanding what is actually happening on the street," said Flynn. "These high-tech sensors will help us evaluate how people are walking, biking and driving so we can design safer streets and encourage safer behavior."
Building on the successful pilot, NYCDOT will scale up a technology that has already transformed how the agency measures traffic activity. Initially installed at 20 locations, the sensors replaced traditional manual traffic counts with continuous, real-time data collection — providing a far more comprehensive picture of how pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles move through city streets.
Mounted on NYCDOT street infrastructure, the sensors anonymously analyze street activity. In addition to counting different types of road users, sensors can measure speeds, capture turning movements nand map how different users move. For example, the sensors could identify areas where pedestrians are crossing mid-block instead of at crosswalks. This could help identify locations where a mid-block crosswalk would be beneficial.
Traditional planning methods have previously relied on short-term, labor-intensive counts. The sensors operate continuously, capturing changes in travel patterns by time of day, season and street design. Designed with privacy as a core value, video footage is processed in real time and immediately discarded, with only anonymous data retained, according to NYCDOT. Faces and license plates are deliberately obscured in any video footage.
By analyzing detailed data on how streets are used, the agency expects to use the sensors to:
• Evaluate the effectiveness of street redesigns and safety projects;
• Identify high-risk locations before crashes occur using "near-miss" data;
• Better allocate street space among pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles;
• Improve access to transit, loading zones, and local businesses; and
• Build a dataset that measures how pedestrian and cycling volumes change across the city and over time.
The sensors will be installed in a diverse range of corridors — from busy commercial streets to residential neighborhoods, ensuring that sensor data reflects the full complexity of New York City's transportation network.
