I call bullshit. Pneumatic road tubes have been around for a while to gather data about traffic flows.
Cameras can be at every intersection all the time and can adapt in real-time to emerging traffic patterns (ie a ballgame ending and a stadium of people hitting the road at once) as well as traffic changes over time from environmental changes
...which would required correlating what they're seeing with outside data. That's not something /inherent/ to the device.
If you're going to correlate datasets, you could just as easily do it with your sports/weather data and pneumatic tube data.
A camera is cheaper and a camera can measure speed as well as slowdowns and stoppages that a tube simply can't do. A tube was the old way but if you're going to make a new device a camera makes more sense.
Why can't pneumatic tubes do this?
Or inductive sensors
Thing is, that really isn't much of a problem in downtown SD where most of these cameras are.