Smart Cameras Blog

[From theNewspaper.com Photo Ticket Cameras to Track Drivers Nationwide]

The vendors of red light cameras and speed cameras are planning to add more features that expand the ability to track motorists. Redflex is planning to add OCR to their cameras in the next few months, which is also known as automatic license plate recognition technology. This could allow them to keep tabs on every car that passes through a particular intersection. “Imagine if you had 1500 or 2000 cameras out there that could look out for the partial plate or full plate number across the 21 states where we do business today,” Elsadek said. “This is the next step for our technology.”

The article also points out that these technologies can be abused. A recent example the article mentions:

In the past, police databases have been used to intimidate innocent motorists. An Edmonton, Canada police sergeant, for example, found himself outraged after he read columnist Kerry Diotte criticize his city’s photo radar operation in the Edmonton Sun newspaper. The sergeant looked up Diotte’s personal information, and, without the assistance of electronic scanners, ordered his subordinates to “be on the lookout” for Diotte’s BMW. Eventually a team of officers followed Diotte to a local bar where they hoped to trap the journalist and accuse him of driving under the influence of alcohol. Diotte took a cab home and the officers’ plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press. Police later cleared themselves of any serious wrong-doing following an extensive investigation.

rshah ALPR, Applications, Red Light Cameras, Traffic Congestion

More than 40,000 sets of number plates were stolen in 2006, a rise of almost 25%, according to police estimates.

Acpo wants a central issuing body for the registration numbers, and all cars to have tamper-proof plates fitted.

rshah ALPR, Policy, Red Light Cameras, Traffic Congestion

From Lauren Weinstein’s Blog:

Privacy activist Weinstein points out potential privacy issues with the NYC congestion plan.

Of course, such a system is also dandy for building and maintaining a massive database of driver activities for a range of other purposes. This is likely (regardless of any claims of data privacy) to become fodder for all manner of officials and clever attorneys — just as “FasTrak” toll data in the San Francisco Bay Area already has.

. . .

This is the kind of invasive technology — with massive “data creep” potential — that privacy-conscious people should really be concerned about today, not services like Google’s existing Street View application.

It’s time to get our priorities straight, folks.

rshah Other Cities, Traffic Congestion

From AME Info:

A smart traffic system is going to be installed in Dubai. It will consist of cameras, sensors, and electronic signboards. The motivation is that this system should initially reduce traffic congestion by 15%. The article states that in other countries these systems have reduced traffic jams by 30%. Here is one very cool application of smart systems:

To ensure that emergency vehicles like ambulances reach accident sites in the least possible time, the Smart Traffic System will detect the presence of such vehicles and inform the center that controls traffic signals, which will time the automatic signals in a way that will give priority to emergency vehicles.

rshah Traffic Congestion

From the Chicago Tribune:

A very nice article on how Chicago is trying to deal with traffic congestion. For background on this topic, see these two posts from last year, 1 & 2.

It mentions a number of different strategies they are using. They include:

1. Installing bus-priority signal systems on CTA buses. Examples of these systems are MIRT, 3M Opticom, and Tomar Strobecom. This technology has resulted in improvements of running times from 17% to 20%, as well as ridership, according to Michael Bolton of the CTA.

2. Changeable message boards to prompt motorists to take alternative routes

3. Synchronizing traffic lights to reduce travel times

• There are 400 intersections and 60 more planned in 2006 are interconnected and synchronized
• 2000 traffic intersections synchronized out of 2800
• Interconnection allows for cameras and other technologies to monitor and modify traffic flow. This can result in a 15% improvement in travel times.
• The holy grail is “being able to adjust traffic signals in response to situations, rather than changing signal timings only at predetermined hours each day, will improve traffic flow around accidents, crime scenes and special events.”

4. They realize that sometime smart traffic technology doesn’t work:

In 2001, Chicago tested self-setting traffic signals at about a dozen River North intersections. The signals were designed to gauge congestion and automatically adjust based on the traffic flow. But the experiment was stopped after several months because the system could not process the high volume of traffic data quickly enough to relay instructions back to the traffic lights in a timely manner, Montazery said. “The concept is very promising, but there are still technology issues to be resolved,” he said.

rshah Traffic Congestion

From ABC7Chicago.com:

Lake County in Illinois is using an Intelligent Transportation System to reduce traffic congestion. They have two sets of cameras. One focuses on detecting traffic to time traffic signals and the another set monitors traffic.

For instance, a camera at Aptakisic and Buffalo Grove Road automatically shifts positions to check for congestion or crashes. The camera detects the speed of the traffic and computes traffic density. If heavy traffic is detected, the system can automatically adjust the signal timing at several intersections until traffic flow is back to normal.

This information is linked to 911 centers and regional traffic centers. By spring, there will be 74 traffic detections cameras and 24 with pan, tilt and zoom capability. The system is integrated with other information systems, such as highway advisory radio and message board signs.

rshah Chicago, Traffic Congestion

From InformationWeek and Government IT

A combination of video surveillance and road sensors is being used to monitor and manage traffic. This is part of larger project, I-580 Smart Corridor, which aims to use IT to improve traffic. An example of what the system can do:

Information generated by the sensors and cameras will feed into Naztec Inc.’s Streetwise software, which runs on a central computer at the Dublin Traffic Operations Center. Engineers will use the data to make quick traffic-management decisions. If there’s an accident or congestion, for example, they can analyze the problem on the fly and change the timing of traffic lights to alter traffic patterns. The data also can be archived for future analysis.

rshah Traffic Congestion

From The Newspaper:

The Newspaper, which incidentally seems like a useful resource for those interested in the intersection of cameras and traffic, writes about a program in Missouri to use cell phones to track cars:

Delcan NET, a Canadian company, developed the system which triangulates the location of each driver by monitoring the signal sent from the cell phone as it is handed off from one cell tower to the next. Each phone is uniquely identified and the information is compared with a highway map to record on what road each motorist is traveling at any given time. The system also records the speed of each vehicle, opening up another potential ticketing technology.

Missouri rejected the simpler solution used by other states of embedding sensors in the pavement that record how many vehicles pass over a stretch of pavement without uniquely identifying them. Missouri wanted a program that required less equipment.”The traffic community has been really excited for quite some time about the possibility of being able to use cell phones to track vehicles,” Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials told the Associated Press. “Almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system.”

A pilot program in Baltimore only tracks Cingular cell phones on 1,000 miles of road. AirSage Inc. has contracted with Sprint to spy on motorists in Norfolk, Virginia and Atlanta and Macon, Georgia.

Update: the NY Times has a article on using cellphones to address congestion.

rshah Traffic Congestion

KnoxNews: Traffic:

A story on the traffic monitoring system for Knoxville provides some clear insights into handling law enforcement and privacy issues with traffic cameras.

Despite the plethora of cameras that can be swung around 360 degrees, TDOT officials emphasize they are not spying on motorists and will not use the system for law enforcement. Dahlinger said TDOT doesn’t record the camera images. “We don’t record anything because, if we did, we’d be bombarded with requests from attorneys for videos of crashes,” he said.

Knoxville also has a policy on personal or corporate messages on traffic message boards. “It can’t be bought”

rshah Traffic Congestion

Links from David Fletcher’s blog:

In Salt Lake city, their new Advanced Management Traffic System (ATMS) in 2000:

the ATMS provides instrumentation on 70 miles (112 km) of area freeways. The system includes closed circuit TV (CCTV) camera coverage every 3,300 ft (1,000 m), traffic monitoring systems that entail embedded loop detectors and microloops approximately every 2,640 ft (800 m), 31 variable message signs (VMS) located on the freeway, four weigh-in-motion stations on the I-15 corridor, seven roadway weather information stations (RWIS), and a fully redundant, self-healing fiber optic backbone communications system. (Link from Jan 2000)

Commonly referred to as the largest single highway construction contract in U.S. history, the ATMS equipment within the area’s infrastructure costs about $70 million (US). “It should be noted that only a small portion of this amount was within the reconstruction area of I-15 itself,” said Mike Holling, vice president of TransCore, UDOT’s ATMS systems manager. ” Funded by a combination of state and federal funds, the total cost of the I-15 reconstruction plan is $1.318 billion. Seven public agencies provided funding for the CommuterLink project. These agencies include: UDOT; Salt Lake City; Salt Lake County; the Federal Highway Administration; Utah Transit Authority; Wasatch Front Regional Council; and the Department of Public Safety. Built for a cost of $80 million, of which nearly 25% was federal aid funds, the TOC functions 18 hours a day, 7-days a week with two operators on duty.

Several years later the system is described as (note the cost savings!):

A recent advanced transportation management system (ATMS) evaluation identified the benefits that Utah’s Salt Lake Valley system is providing. The study quantified the value that each individual ATMS component provides based on delay, safety and emissions. These individual components included: ramp meter, CCTV, variable message signs (VMS), incident management teams (IMT) and traffic-signal coordination. In the Salt Lake Valley, there are over 900 traffic signals. The system communicates via fiber optics to more than 600 traffic signals, communicating through the three regional transportation operation centers (TOCs). The fiber system cost over $51 million to install, almost half the entire ATMS system costs. The estimated annual ATMS benefit is $179 million. The traffic-signal coordination effort accounts for 87% of the system-wide social benefit. (Link)

Fletcher also mentions the San Antonio system (live data) it comprises of:

The TransGuide system has expanded to include over 140 cameras, 150 Dynamic Message Signs, 150 Lane Control signal Systems, and over 1000 traffic sensors. The communication network is comprised of a fiber optic cable network stretching over 100 miles with over 120 fiber network communication cabinets. (Link)

rshah Traffic Congestion