The City of Ridgeland will install four new signals on Old Canton Road with video detection to allow traffic to flow smoothly.
Public Works Director Mike McCollum said the city is moving away from using sensors under the asphalt and installing traffic cameras instead.
“The way we do detection is we have sensors underneath the asphalt that pick up your car when it comes up over it,” he said. “Whenever one of those malfunctions, you have to go out and dig the street up and replace that.”
He said the advantage to having traffic cameras is that it sits off the ground, so that if anything happens to the camera, workers will not have to come in and dig up the street, and there is no delay.
“So those are easier to operate and maintain,” he said. “That’s the main reason we have them and the video detection.”
McCollum said there are other ways the city could use the cameras.
“We can do other things with it, like traffic counts, and there are some other capabilities too,” he said. “There are several programs that you can run that actually read tags and stuff like that if you wanted it to.”
However, he said that is not something city officials are interested in at the moment.
The new cameras will cost the city $65,000.
They were on the budget for next fiscal year, but since the city had leftover funds on this fiscal year budget, an amendment was made to purchase them this year.
The latest traffic camera to be installed in the city was at Old Canton and Lake Harbour.
“In fact, that’s the new MDOT standard that they have,” McCollum said. “When they go back and rehab the signal it goes back to the video detection.”
Many places are following their lead to make the switch to traffic cameras over street sensors to make traffic management decisions.
McCollum said Ridgeland will eventually move completely over to traffic cameras over time. He said these allow traffic to run smoother and have the capability to coordinate with other signals.
“It can help change signal timings here at the office cause you can see what’s going on out there from the office,” McCollum said.
They can be used for information, such as vehicle flow in those areas.
The cameras will be going up soon. McCollum said the money has to be spent this budget year, so they should go up before the end of September.
The traffic cameras will not be broadcasted on the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) website.
However, Public Works Director Mike McCollum said the city does have other existing cameras in other areas that the public can view on the website, which notifies the public on current traffic conditions.
