Editorial: Smile on the Portland Avenue Bridge, you are on camera

Published 9:07 am Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Smile when you are on the Portland Avenue Bridge. You are on camera.

The city of Bend has a new camera on the bridge, fortified with artificial intelligence.

The camera is counting. It counts the number of people using the bridge, and singles out “pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, cars, trucks, motorcycles, minibuses and buses,” the city says. It provides the city with real-time data on bridge users.

No, it does not capture and retain people’s faces or license plates. It does not record. It counts.

We asked. It doesn’t count smiles.

It’s a replacement for the traffic counting equipment that the city previously used on the bridge. The city has been counting traffic at key locations since 2017 as part of an effort to better understand traffic of all types. If the new camera works better and has cheaper ongoing costs, the city may replace the other equipment at the bridges at Newport, Galveston, Colorado and the Franklin undercrossing. The new package of camera, software and other stuff had an initial cost of $8,500. Of course there is an ongoing subscription fee of $1,080, a year.

They always get you on the subscription fees, right?

Bend can’t plan for traffic if it doesn’t understand traffic flows and who is using what kind of transportation where. So if this works better, great.

It’s too bad the camera doesn’t measure how many people are smiling. Government’s priority is knowing how you are getting where you are going, not if you are smiling along the way.