Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Goodyear council reviews traffic operations, camera policy and Road Safety Action Plan
Loading...
Summary
City staff briefed the council on camera types and a 14-day retention policy, traffic counts and signal upgrades, and urged public input for a federally funded Road Safety Action Plan that officials aim to adopt later this year.
City staff on April 13 updated the Goodyear City Council on traffic operations and the Road Safety Action Plan, describing how cameras, counts and new signal technology feed into a safety strategy residents can shape through an online comment map.
Steve Cinto, the city engineer, told council members the city uses two signal-camera types: fixed vehicle-detection cameras ("fixed, live stream, and not recorded") and pan-tilt-zoom cameras that are recorded and used for traffic management and post-incident review. "They're both mounted on the signal poles and one's a detection camera and the second one's a point tilt zoom or PTC camera," Cinto said. He said the city adopted a traffic camera recording policy in October 2024 that limits access to authorized engineering personnel and permits the police department to request footage.
On retention, staff and the city attorney said state retention rules require a 14-day minimum for routine footage, and material pulled for investigations may be retained for the length of the case. The attorney said the state archivist denied a request to shorten the retention requirement despite storage concerns; city policy blurs or redacts license-plate information when appropriate.
Cinto also reviewed the city's traffic-count program. City crews collected 2026 counts at roughly 240 locations, using pneumatic road tubes for 24-hour volume and speed counts and roadside units that anonymously detect travel-time data for signal timing. Analysis from the January'226 counts is expected to be posted online after staff completes the report.
On signals, Cinto described detection methods and operating modes: fully actuated intersections that respond to arriving vehicles, coordinated corridors (designed to create a "green wave") operating roughly 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and a pilot of adaptive (dynamic) signal control. "We're piloting this in several areas" and engineering will return in June with a fuller briefing, he said.
Staff framed those technical efforts inside the city's Road Safety Action Plan (RSAP), a project funded by a 2024 Safe Streets and Roads for All grant to develop a data-driven plan and demonstration projects, including painted green bike-lane pilots. Cinto said the RSAP will produce a set of strategies to reduce fatalities and serious injuries and stressed the importance of public input. A short video and a comment map (goodyearsafestreets.com) were shown to demonstrate how residents can drop a pin and describe concerns or suggestions.
Why it matters: staff said the combination of camera monitoring, updated counts and new signal technology will inform near-term and capital decisions and that public comments can highlight near misses or locations not clear in the data. Council members pressed staff on outreach, timeline and how anecdotal reports are triaged into engineering follow-ups; staff said urgent safety concerns are handled immediately while other suggestions will be folded into the RSAP recommendations.
Next steps: engineering will return for a June work session on adaptive timing and plans to bring the RSAP to council for adoption later this year so the city can pursue implementation funding in upcoming federal grant windows.
