The Lights are Green all the way!
Gone are the days when traffic policemen manned the signals and changed lights. Today, centralized computers sitting far away monitor traffic for many miles and switch signals, alert first responders and have potential to do much more.
In the 1970s, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen created the first automated traffic counting and processing system. Can you guess what it was called? It was an arduously manual process that used rubber hoses stretched across roads, recording data on paper tapes and then processing them using the computers of the day to create flowcharts depicting traffic patterns.
Today’s traffic management goes beyond turning a set of lights on or off. Knee-jerk reactions to localized situations (like a traffic jam) have been replaced with knowledge about traffic all around the affected spot, alternate routing, historical information about traffic at that time of day and so on. These systems are hence interchangeablycalled Automated Traffic Management (ATMS) or Intelligent Traffic Management (ITMS) systems.
Systems have been closely tied into each other to ensure that there is a cascading effect of a change made elsewhere. For example, if the Emergency Services has initiated a response to (say) a fire in an office block, today’s ITMS can automatically ensure that the pathways from the first responders’ dispatch locations (fire stations, police stations, etc), and the routes to the nearest emergency and trauma centres are maintained clear.
How do ITMS work?
ITMScan be simplified to a “see and act” system. The system “sees” traffic using two independent inputs:
· Sensors, that are ideally placed some 100 meters or so apart on the roads. And,
· High resolution cameras placed at strategic intervals
Together, the sensors and cameras see and count the flow of traffic in different roads and lanes.To act on what it sees, the ITMS has control of the road system’s traffic light systems.The simplest act is to regulate the flow of traffic at junctions by stopping some lanes and letting other lanes flow.
But, ITMS can “see” the traffic for many junctions around – the whole city even. This adds the next layer of complexity for the system. By knowing what roads ahead are not loaded and what type of traffic are is headed to a certain point on the map, the ITMS can route and manage traffic using a cascade of lights. Human traffic personnel can only use their own intuition and patchy communication over wireless radios between cooperating officers to accomplish highly localized efficiencies.
Now, add historical information to the mix. Over a period, the system is recording everything it is “seeing” to a centralized data store – call it what you will. It can “mine” this data store to figure out what to expect at a certain time of day. For example, if it can identify that there is a massive flow of trucks along a certain route at 7pm every Wednesday, it can act to route those trucks along a different route and avoid jams. This pre-emption and tactical planning are what takes a simple light-switcher to the realm of “intelligence”.
Implementations
Systems like the one in Houston, Texas (USA) as pictured at the top of this article go the whole way in integrating all systems “traffic” into one intelligent system. Their system pulls in data from their city roads (all lanes of traffic), toll-ways, highways passing through and around the city and even data from their rail-based transit (what we would call our “metro”) into a centralized command centre. Integrate that with cameras that can look at and know where people walking on the streets are headed and you got yourself a heck of a smart system that can have buses or trains waiting for people, preventing traffic jams and clearing the roads for First Responders.
Closer home, New Delhi in India is aiming to become the first ITMS system in India, with the initial rollouts expected to begin this year (in 2019). Though the plans to do so have been around for a decade or more, the project got its green light last year with the Ministry of Home Affairs providing the required approvals. The Delhi Traffic Police (DTP) is aiming to roll out close to 8,000 cameras on the city’s busy roads. This ITMS will include audio and visual interfaces back to the motorists in the form of a public address system (PA) and LED boards. The PA and LED boards will be used to warn motorists about traffic violations they are committing and of conditions ahead on their path.
One year ago, the city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia integrated its ATMS called “City Brain” with e-commerce giant’s AI system to create an intelligent traffic management system. This sorts through data from hundreds of traffic lights, cameras and other information from various transport systems. Its primary use is to ease and avoid congestion on the roads and calculate the fastest route through an area for emergency services, using real-time data. This system is already in use in Hangzhou, China where it has been termed a resounding success.
Reversing Google Maps
Several ITMS (including Delhi’s planned one) use Google Maps technology to provide motorists with alternate routes, others aim to pre-empt the technology and provide a more real-time implementation. Would an age come where each smart city would have its own navigation app for its local commuters and motorists providing an integrated real-time approach to getting efficiently from point A to point B? After all, isn’t that the game?
Advertorial
At KazaCam, we provide numerous camera-based solutions for the government, law enforcement, enterprise and personal purposes. The combination of systems we have developed can, today, provide city traffic management with a level of detection and data collection for intelligent decision taking – setting you up on a good glide path towards a larger ITMS implementation. Talk to us at [email protected] for more information, a demonstration of our capabilities and what we can achieve together!
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