Meet NYC’s new smart street sensors: The 24/7 system upgrading 100 locations across the city to track how drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians move

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Sydney Hargrove

 –  Junior Staff Writer

 ·  June 4, 2026

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Buckle up, New York! A new press release from the NYC DOT is outlining a plan to see how our favorite city gets around.

The organization is scaling up its data collection capabilities by expanding a high–tech traffic sensor initiative, initially launched as a 20-location pilot program in 2023. The city will deploy these advanced, privacy-protective street activity sensors to 100 locations citywide.

In the statement, NYC DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn said:

Safer street design starts with understanding what is actually happening on the street. 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.

The Transition to Continuous Street Analysis

For decades, traffic planning relied heavily on manual labor: inspectors sitting at roadsides with clipboards, physically counting vehicles and noting transportation patterns over short, high-variance intervals. This traditional method made it notoriously difficult to gather comprehensive, long–term records.

The new sensors are small devices mounted directly onto existing NYC DOT street infrastructure. Running 24/7, they’ll continuously capture changing travel dynamics across all five boroughs.

Granular Data Capture and the Role of “Near-Miss” Tracking

These smart sensors do more than count cars. Using machine vision technology, they can track and identify pedestrians, cyclists, buses, cars, and trucks all at once. 

The sensors map how people and vehicles move through intersections, measuring speeds, turns, and traffic patterns in real time.

They can even detect close calls, like a car nearly hitting a cyclist with an opening door or failing to yield to a pedestrian, helping the DOT spot safety risks and make improvements before a serious crash happens.

To protect privacy, the sensors are designed to keep people anonymous from the start. Video footage is processed directly on the device, with faces and license plates automatically blurred before any data is analyzed. 

According to the DOT, the original footage is immediately deleted, and only anonymous traffic data—such as counts, movement patterns, and travel directions—is stored and shared. No personally identifiable information is uploaded to city systems or viewed by staff.

As New York continues working toward safer streets, the new sensors give city planners a clearer picture of how people actually move through intersections every day.