New traffic monitors popping up around Baton Rouge

BATON ROUGE – New traffic monitors popping up around Baton Rouge, making residents wonder what the innovations are bringing to the community. 

“So what these are is they’re called permanent count stations,” explained Mark Armstrong, the mayor’s chief communication officer. 

You can spot one near busy intersections, businesses and even bus stops.

“They’re doing a traffic count in real time all the time, and they’re going to be permanent. They use radar to do that and they also have cameras that are attached to them that are going to be a live stream,” Armstrong said. 

They’re collecting data to help the city with a very outdated problem. 

“In general, our traffic signals are very outdated in East Baton Rouge Parish. A lot of the technology is 40 years old. When this is complete, and it’s going to be about two years, we’re going to have probably the most up to date traffic signals in the entire country,” he said. 

In the end, the updated traffic signals will benefit drivers who routinely take those routes.

“What people can count on is consistent commute times for where they’re going every single day,” Armstrong said. 

Data collected now will also help the city when construction begins on the I-10 widening project next year. 

“In anticipation of the additional traffic that we’re going to have that’s going to move on onto our surface streets off of the interstate in order to get around that, we’ll have updated and synchronized traffic signals that are working together and synced together more than anytime before,” he said. 

But synchronized signals may not mean what you think it means. 

“What synchronization is all about is all of our technology working together so that you have consistent drive times on a regular basis,” he explained. 

The city hopes the cameras will help create consistent drive times on a regular basis.