Skip to main content

ADOT installs new sensors to help track freeway traffic flow

Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) is installing new in-road sensors along the state’s freeways to monitor traffic flow in an effort to reduce congestion. The sensors provide the data used to estimate the travel times that that are displayed on message boards above freeways. The data also helps ADOT and the Maricopa Association of Governments, the regional transportation-planning agency make decisions about future freeway improvements. Using electronic wires embedded in the road, the sensors have b
May 19, 2017 Read time: 1 min
6576 Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) is installing new in-road sensors along the state’s freeways to monitor traffic flow in an effort to reduce congestion.


The sensors provide the data used to estimate the travel times that that are displayed on message boards above freeways. The data also helps ADOT and the Maricopa Association of Governments, the regional transportation-planning agency make decisions about future freeway improvements.

Using electronic wires embedded in the road, the sensors have been used along many Valley freeways for years. The current project is installing additional in-pavement sensors as a more reliable replacement for acoustic devices that are mounted on poles.

When the sensor-installation project is completed, more than 85 locations on Phoenix-area freeways will have new traffic-flow sensors.

Related Content

  • February 22, 2013
    Arizona DOT upgrades camera system
    Arizona’s traffic operations centre was built more than twenty years ago; the first traffic camera was installed over Interstate10 in 1990. That’s all changed now thanks to a recent US$2.1 million upgrade of the camera system by Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) which replaced cables with fibre optic lines, so the cameras now show fresh images every ten seconds rather than every five minutes. The upgrade has also replaced the 32 video screens in the traffic operations centre, enabling staff to sca
  • May 26, 2016
    Viaduct deck renewal creates detour dilemma for MassDOT
    As the deck renewal of the I-91 viaduct in Springfield gets underway, David Crawford looks at the preparation and planning to ease the resulting traffic congestion. Accommodating the deck renewal of a 4km-long/four-lanes in each direction viaduct in the heart of Springfield (Massachusetts’ third largest city), has involved the state’s Department of Transportation (MassDOT) in a massive exercise in transport research and ITS-based area-wide preplanning and traffic management. Supporting a workzone of well ab
  • August 30, 2013
    Smart technology keeps infrastructure operating safely
    US Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are using smart technology to warn civil engineers when something is wrong with the infrastructure, says the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Association (AASHTO). Sensors installed on bridges, in roadways, and on maintenance vehicles are communicating real-time performance and weather data, allowing engineers to solve problems before they occur. "Most people look at a road or a bridge and never realise the technology that today's modern tra
  • January 23, 2012
    Future traffic management needs new thinking, new technology
    One of the biggest problems facing US ITS professionals, says Georgia DOT's Hugh Colton, is the constrained thinking which is sometimes forced upon those making procurement decisions. It is time, he says, to look again at how we do things. In the November/December 2010 edition of this journal, Pete Goldin interviewed Joseph Sussman, chairman of the US's ITS Program Advisory Committee. Amongst other observations that Sussman made was that, technologically, ITS in the US is 10 years behind that in the world-l