Yellowknife will use radar speed signs to gather traffic data

New electronic signs will soon appear in Yellowknife that gather data on traffic and vehicle speed.

The City of Yellowknife wants to use them to help understand whether speeding is an issue in certain neighbourhoods, particularly when residents file complaints.

The acquisition of the signs was discussed on Monday as councillors debated how to act on recent concern about street safety in the city, where two children were struck by drivers in the same week of June.

City staff said they would spend time this summer assessing whether right turns on red should be prohibited at the intersection where one of those incidents took place. A parent of the child involved had asked the mayor to consider that step.

Broadly, though, council agreed the city’s focus should be on a transportation master plan set to be devised in the coming two years rather than making significant changes in the short term.

Mayor Rebecca Alty said waiting for that plan – which must be drawn up, budgeted and adopted – was better than “doing whack-a-mole and addressing everything, or focusing on this, and then this, and then this.”

“I think the master transportation plan will be the place to consider the larger initiatives on this,” agreed deputy mayor Garett Cochrane.

Deterrence and data

The radar signs coming to Yellowknife are the same as ones many drivers will have seen elsewhere: you drive past and they tell you your speed as you go. Perhaps you’ll get a frowny face if you’re going too quickly, or a pleasant electronic compliment on a screen if you’re obeying the speed limit.

Behind the scenes, those solar-powered signs collect data from each vehicle that will allow the city to understand how many vehicles pass each sign and what speed they’re doing.

“We can see any outliers,” said Mitchell Roland, Yellowknife’s municipal enforcement manager, explaining the benefits of the data to councillors at a Monday meeting.

“Let’s say we get frequent public complaints in an area across the city saying, ‘In my neighbourhood, people are always speeding.’ We can put the signs up there, at first almost as a deterrent – I’m careful about that word – but they allow us to track that information and that data.”

The results will allow City Hall to either conclude that there is an issue, Roland said, or decide a complaint isn’t backed up by the statistics.

“It allows us to look at that and make decisions based on data rather than emotions and feelings,” he said.

The signs will be installed later in the summer. There are two of them and, while Roland said they aren’t portable, they can be moved “with some work.” (Where they’ll be placed in the first instance wasn’t discussed.)

“I didn’t realize those ‘your speed’ signs were also collecting data,” said Alty.

“I’m really looking forward to that, because then the department can use it to increase the strategic enforcement.

“If there is an item coming forward in Budget 2025 to, say, put signs at every school, that would probably be something that I would look forward to supporting.”

As Roland explained to council, speed signs won’t solve the right-turn-on-red issue that’s currently in front of council.

Public works director Chris Greencorn said the one place where right turns on red are currently barred in Yellowknife is outside the Avens seniors’ facilities, where sight lines are poor and “you have to basically creep out into the intersection to see if something’s coming, which puts you in a pedestrian right of way.”

Greencorn said a formal review of the intersection of Gitzel Street and Franklin Avenue will now take place, which could lead to a similar ban being introduced there.