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Cameras to Monitor Downtown Streets If you are driving on the streets of Lower Manhattan, the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center (LMCCC) will be watching you. That is the goal of an ambitious traffic surveillance and enforcement plan the agency hopes to put in effect by the fall. With construction at the World Trade Center site and surrounding areas ramping up, the LMCCC will be increasing the number of cameras monitoring Downtown traffic from 10 to 31. Those cameras will detect vehicle volume and speeds, using a combination of video and microwave detection. But this will be the first time the city has used the cameras on local streets. Determining what is slowing down movement in stop and go traffic clogged with construction vehicles, buses pulling in and out and double parked cars is more complicated than on highway stretches with steadier speeds. On local streets, said Josh Rosenbloom, LMCCC Director of City Operations, “Ten miles per hour vs. five miles per hour is a big deal.” The traffic will be watched both at a citywide command center in Long Island City and the local LMCCC command center. The Center will also be adding personnel from the NYPD, the Department of Buildings and the Department of Transportation to a beefed up enforcement team in order to react quickly to traffic violations. “It will be pretty impressive,” said Rosenbloom. But there may some trial and error involved, he added in an interview with the Trib last month, at one point quickly correcting himself from saying “if” they get the system working to “when." The real-time traffic information will also be posted on the Internet for public use. Asked if someone in the southern part of Battery Park City trying to make their way to the Holland Tunnel would be able to find the least congested route, Rosenbloom responded, “That’s exactly the idea.”
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