Vortex & Videalert support school streets to improve road safety and air quality

Working in partnership with Vortex and Videalert, the London council is using CCTV camera technology and hyperlocal, air quality monitoring sensors to implement zero-traffic school streets successfully.

A school-street initiative is a road closure strategy to create safer streets for everyone by reducing traffic and improving local air quality. It involves temporarily closing one or more roads surrounding a school to most vehicles for a short period at the start and end of the school day.

With all air quality sensors manufactured in-house by Vortex, the VTX Air sensors have been installed at primary schools alongside Videalert’s RDS CCTV cameras with six camera units and six air quality sensors deployed at each school.

This initiative, which will leverage the power of digital technology, will also attempt to minimise anti-social behaviour caused by improper parking and dangerous vehicle manoeuvres, whilst boosting school accessibility.

With fewer vehicles on the school run, this will improve traffic flow for the rest of the neighbourhood and make it easier for pupils, parents, teachers, and staff to walk, wheel, or bike to school. Similarly, there will be fewer idling vehicles at school gates, which will result in fewer emissions circulating in the air.

To validate the natural environmental benefits of this intervention, air quality sensors have been installed to analyse the impact of school street closures on air pollution levels.

By collecting hyperlocal, real-time data before and after the intervention, the Council can verify its success by viewing its bespoke dashboard that provides comprehensive coverage of various gasses and air pollutants that are recorded and updated every five minutes.

Hering continued: "Through using Vortex and Videalert's respected technologies, parents and children walking to school can enjoy the vehicle-free zone and not worry about the dangerous pollutants often generated by high traffic congestion."

Vortex, a leader in the air quality monitoring field, has provided the sensor technology, wireless network, and maintenance support for the project.

VTX Air, active monitoring sensors are deployed on a highly secure decentralised Mesh network, and powered by AI, ensuring constant calibration with Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN) stations with any required configurations performed over the air- priced for high density and scalable deployment.