Portland layers speed sensors onto its rest-in-red signals
Isaac Romero, who lives along the corridor, described the change as visible from his front door. He recalled waking in the middle of the night to drivers racing to beat the traffic lights or one another, and seeing cars that had crashed and flipped — including one that ended up in his neighbor’s yard.
“We had one accident where it’s even shaken the whole house because some guy slammed into a tree,” Romero said. “It’s a lot of change because now you don’t get as many people flying through there.”
The new system layers speed sensors onto the rest-in-red approach: drivers traveling at or below the posted limit receive a much earlier green light, while speeders wait at red. Albuquerque deployed the system on Lead and Coal after years of trying to curb high-speed crashes through conventional enforcement alone.
Jennifer Turner, the city’s director of municipal development, said the technology functions as its own marketing.
“We’re finding that the technology itself is kind of its best advertisement,” Turner said. “If you come to Albuquerque right now and you’re driving that corridor, you will learn pretty quickly that if you are speeding, you stop.”
Albuquerque credits the approach with a dramatic drop in crashes and injuries along the corridor. Portland, Oregon, has taken a similar approach, pairing speed sensors with its rest-in-red signals.