Traffic
Monitoring

In December 2022, The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) established a Slow Streets program to discourage cut-through traffic on 16 residential streets in San Francisco. At the intersections of each of the streets, SFMTA installed soft-hit paddles designed to limit the number of vehicles to 1,000 a day and an average speed of 15mph.

Shortly after the Slow Streets program launched, The San Francisco Parks Alliance and Kid Safe San Francisco funded a pilot program with Belgium-based Telraam to distribute traffic monitoring sensors to community organizers on each of San Francisco’s Slow Streets. These sensors are installed on windows looking out onto the street and track the number of pedestrians, bikes and vehicles that pass in front of it. They also estimate the average speed at which 85% of vehicles are traveling.

However, despite their €160 price tag, Telraam sensors have a number of limitations that prevent them from being used as an effective advocacy tool, at least in the United States. Nonetheless, since Telraam makes their data available via an API, we decided to take a look at what their sensors in the San Francisco Bay Area are capturing.

The map below shows active Telraam sensors in San Francisco and Berkeley, CA. The sensors are color coded to reflect the average daily vehicle volume they see. Alongside San Francisco’s Slow Streets, Berkeley instituted Bicycle Boulevards which also attempt to deprioritize motor vehicle traffic. Many of the sensors are installed on these streets by residents who are trying to hold their city officials accountable to keeping their family safe from dangerous drivers.

In 2021, San Francisco laid out a climate action plan that calls for 80% of all trips in the city to be made sustainably by walking, biking or taking public transit by 2030. As of 2024, none of the streets that have sensors installed are anywhere near achieving that goal.

Telraam's Limitations

Telraam sensors, while a novel product that can perform basic traffic monitoring, have several limitations that prevent them from being used as an effective advocacy tool in the United States.

1. Most notably, they do not work in the dark, which prevents them from providing accurate traffic counts that reflect the entire day. Their accuracy also significantly suffers in direct sunlight.
2. They do not capture video evidence of dangerous driving. This is intentional due to what Telraam states are privacy concerns. However, not having video evidence of drivers constantly speeding down your street, running red lights, punish passing cyclists or driving on sidewalks, greatly inhibits one's ability to produce the online outrage that moves politicians into action.
3. They must be installed in a 1st or 2nd story indoor location with a direct line of sight to the street. Many residents who are concerned about traffic safety live in apartments that don’t meet these requirements, especially in denser areas of the city where dangerous drivers are a constant threat.
4. They require a cellular data connection and do not work over WiFi. This is a feature and a bug. On one hand, relying on a cellular data connection simplifies installation however in San Francisco there are numerous cellular dead spots where these cannot be installed. Not including a $10 WiFi chip as a secondary option is hard to justify at a €160 price point.

An Ineffective Tool for Safer Streets

In addition to the limitations above, we have found that city officials routinely ignore the data Telraam sensors capture, despite pleas from residents who have invested their own time and money in Telraam’s platform.

In Berkeley, Telraam data showed that driver speeds increased by 5 mph after a residential street near a school was repaved. While 5 mph may seem small, for every 10 mph increase in speed the crash fatality rate nearly doubles. Pleas from residents to add traffic calming measures to the street to slow drivers down after the repaving were ignored by the city.

In 2022, Berkeley Councilmember Taplin introduced legislation that would have required adding traffic calming measures to a street after it’s repaved, however Berkeley’s City Council struck down that legislation after the city's transportation planners complained that it would delay repaving projects by requiring them to conduct outreach to determine what traffic calming measures on the street should look like. On November 14th, 2024, 78 year old Ben Brown was hit and killed by a driver three blocks from the Telraam that captured the increase in driver speeds after the street was repaved. In response, Walk Bike Berkeley issued a statement again urging the city to install traffic calming measures on the street where Mr. Brown was killed.

Ben Brown was killed by a driver on Rose Street in Berkeley, CA after the city's traffic engineers refused to install traffic calming measures despite Telraam data showing an increase in driver speeds after the street was repaved.

In San Francisco, community organizers say Telraam sensors have helped start conversations with SFMTA staff. However they note that the city's traffic engineers are very resistant to adopt new data collection tools and routinely ignore Telraam’s data.

Residents on Lake Street in San Francisco purchased and installed the first Telraam sensors in North America and have sent several requests to SFMTA leadership begging the agency to acknowledge Telraam's data which shows daily vehicle volume and speeds exceeding thresholds set for Lake Street. Mark Dreger, program manager for San Francisco's Slow Streets Program, stated that the SFMTA "cannot use community-collected data directly for city decision-making processes due to standardization and verification protocols."

This leaves exasperated residents who invested in Telraam's platform with few options other than to throw up their hands in despair. If the city's traffic engineers won't acknowledge and respond to Telraam's data, what's the point of purchasing and installing their sensors?

Safe Streets are Political

While your city's transit agency manages your streets, its decisions can be overruled by your city council or mayor. If your transit agency isn't receptive to your data collection efforts to calm traffic on your street, you must either lobby your city council representative for support or create a situation where they cannot ignore you. An effective way to get their attention is to start recording videos that show the dangerous conditions on your street.

In San Francisco, residents of Shotwell and Capp Streets in the Mission District have consistently shared videos online showing prostitution activities on their streets. These videos have stoked widespread outrage that forced the city to install traffic barriers to deter illicit activity. Numerous videos of illegal sideshows that have circulated online have successfully pressured the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Police Department to start cracking down on reckless driving. Most recently on Lake Street, residents have started recording videos of drivers ignoring stop signs near a school, hoping these will finally get the city's attention.

The unfortunate reality is that data alone is rarely enough to move decision makers into action. You have to repeatedly show them how bad the conditions in your neighborhood are and it's very hard to ignore video evidence, especially if it goes viral on social media.

How to Take Action

Getting policy makers to take action on any issue requires the following:

1. First, build a relationship with them. If you don't know who your city council representative is, find out and introduce yourself. Most elected officials hold open office hours to meet with their constituents and hear their concerns. Meet with your elected representatives and their legislative aides. Building a relationship is the first step towards getting them to take your concerns seriously.
2. Capture video evidence that shows the scale and severity of the problem you want them to address. Video is very powerful and there are plenty of inexpensive security cameras on the market that can help automate this.
3. Find data that shows how the problem is trending and how it compares to other issues your elected representative may be prioritizing. Our elected officials only have so much capacity and your problem is likely competing for their attention against numerous other issues. Many cities have open data portals that you can pull data from or you can submit a public records request. If you're having trouble finding the data you need, reach out and we'll help you.

Alternatives to Telraam

A few DIY traffic monitoring projects have surfaced over the years, however Telraam is the only consumer-friendly product we know of that has gone to market. Here are a few promising projects that are currently in development. If you know of any others that address Telraam's limitations, please let us know.

• Traffic Monitor AI – A promising open-source project that is currently in development and is expected to be available in 2025.
• Pageauc Speed Camera – Another open-source project that has been around for awhile and is well documented.