Speed Trailer

Speed Trailer Deployment

The City of Newport recently purchased four SMART VMS trailers from Kustom Signals of Chanute, Kansas with funds from a grant. These Speed Monitoring Awareness Radar Trailers with Variable Message Signs can fulfill multiple needs.

They can be deployed to locations where the City receives requests for monitoring the speed of traffic and they can direct traffic into and out of Newport during periods of heavy traffic flow. The VMS comes pre-programmed with hundreds of messages or we can create our own.

Newport is the first community in the country to purchase this technologically advanced trailer!

The SMART VMS reads the speed of an approaching vehicle and can display it on a large digital board on the trailer. A computer inside the trailer will also store the speed of every vehicle. This information is used during the data collection phase of our Directed Enforcement Program so we can deploy officers more effectively. We will place officers on the street when people are most likely speeding.

The advantage of such a device is two-fold. This device provides positive feedback to the motorist by making them more aware of their speed. Many times motorists are not aware they are speeding. From the use of such devices, other cities have found that critical speeds have reduced.

The other benefit is that many times the residents complaining of motorists speeding will have a false sense of vehicle speeds. The trailer provides positive feedback to the residents to the speed at which motorists are traveling and gives them a good feel of vehicle speeds on their street.

With the ability to leave the trailer in place unattended, it saves money on staff time since it can be in place while it continues to provide a benefit to the neighborhood and the data collected is essential for future planned enforcement.

You can read more about Directed Enforcement by clicking on Traffic Enforcement Operations and view our current activities on Current Traffic Enforcement Operations.

If you would like your street to be considered for monitoring please contact Sgt. Barker.

Request to have the speed trailer placed on your street