{"id":258294,"date":"2026-06-07T16:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258294\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T16:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:54:09","slug":"new-york-city-installing-sensors-to-detect-pedestrians-vehicles-and-pretty-much-everything-else-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/258294\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Installing Sensors to Detect Pedestrians, Vehicles, and Pretty Much Everything Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may sound like yet another rollout of a dystopian surveillance state network of facial recognition cameras \u2014 but the New York Department of Transportation\u2019s latest initiative has a far more tame goal in mind: tracking modes of transport to improve street design.<\/p>\n

According to the Gothamist<\/a>, the New York Department of Transportation has added 100 roadside sensors across the city in order to pick up data on vehicle, bike, and pedestrian traffic.<\/p>\n

The effort is an expansion of a 2023 sensor pilot meant to gather data on city traffic, which saw 20 such devices installed on signposts in various locations. The machine-learning sensors \u2014 explained as a tool to help improve pedestrian crossings and bicycle infrastructure \u2014 are trained to anonymize faces and license plates, DOT deputy commissioner Eric Beaton told the Gothamist.<\/p>\n

An image shared by the DOT<\/a> shows the sensor in action: a hazy blur obscures some details, but a machine learning algorithm ensures each pedestrian and vehicle is visually tracked in color-coded boxes, each with their own label.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A view from the New York City Department of Transportation’s traffic sensors, with various traffic elements highlighted and labeled in color-coordinated boxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing that we ever touch or that anyone could ever touch that has anything identifying to any person or any vehicle,\u201d the DOT\u2019s Beaton claimed. \u201cThese sensors provide a much richer set of data for us to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the surveillance move, the DOT said it will share a portion of the data collected with the community. Accountability watchdogs, however, are demanding all of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019re collecting this data on behalf of the public, as a taxpayer-funded agency, we deserve to know what it says and so there should be regular reporting,\u201d transit advocate and former policy director for the DOT Jon Orcutt told the Gothamist.<\/p>\n

Still, the situation highlights the tricky position city officials find themselves in, where collecting enough data to make informed decisions about better transit options necessitates an expansion of municipal surveillance.<\/p>\n

As Orcutt explains: \u201cthere are [currently] 20 or 25 sites where bikes are counted. You get a very small data set from that. You know we have 6,000 miles of streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

More on New York City: Authorities Alarmed as Mysterious Figures Emerge From Sewers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may sound like yet another rollout of a dystopian surveillance state network of facial recognition cameras \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,100651,56,82062],"class_list":["post-258294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-department-of-transportation","tag-ny","tag-the-gothamist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}