City wants eyes on every intersection
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/41...-intersection/
The city is on a $10-million road toward remotely controlling — and watching — every intersection in the city over the next five years.
Think of it as the cost of managing traffic during a Queen Street hill rebuild, major highway collision or post-Ticats game pileup.
"If we can get it done it will be pretty cool," traffic operations manager Martin White said of the multi-year proposal, which includes a state-of-the-art control centre and multiple cameras for each of the city's 550 signalized intersections.
"We'll have the ability to do really advanced, reactive traffic management for big events, on-demand changes for emergencies … But we're a few years away yet."
A few dollars away, too. Construction will soon begin on a $350,000 control room in a traffic operations building on Upper Ottawa Street near Stone Church Road.
But most of the cash needed for 1,100-plus cameras, communications equipment and other electrical work will need approval in future capital budgets, White said.
A citywide rollout would likely cost close to $10 million, although White expects cameras to be installed in targeted locations first for evaluation. The City of Windsor recently committed around $2 million for 200 similar cameras.
White is hopeful small-scale tests of the technology — already under way at a handful of intersections — will convince council to continue investing in the project, which dates back to 2005 studies on "intelligent" transportation planning technology.
Councillor Lloyd Ferguson is a big fan of the test camera at the corner of Trinity Road and Wilson Street near the Ancaster Fairgrounds.
"I don't know if we can justify the cost to have them everywhere, but in the right place, boy, it does a fabulous job," said Ferguson, who pointed to the camera's ability to change signals to deal with festival traffic that otherwise "backs up to the highway."
Outside of a traffic emergency, the fish-eye cameras can "detect" vehicles approaching an intersection and maintain traffic flow by automatically adjusting signal timings.
But when traffic chaos strikes, White said control room employees will eventually be able to make signal changes "on the fly" by monitoring intersections in real time.
Contrast that scenario with the city's ongoing efforts to deal with traffic fallout from the never-ending Queen Street hill rebuild.
"When that congestion hits, we're going to the bottom of the escarpment and manually adjusting signal timing at 15 different (intersection) locations," White said, adding this includes multiple trips for traffic counting.
In Windsor, the city provides live feeds to police, fire officials and the provincial Ministry of Transportation.
While intersections will eventually be monitored in real time by control room operators, White said there is no plan to record or otherwise archive information.
"Anything outside of (the live feed) would need to be a separate and no doubt very sensitive conversation," he said, pointing to potential privacy concerns.
At the same time, White said he expected the city would co-ordinate with fire, EMS and police to make use of the cameras to speed collision response. An update report on the project is expected at council before the end of the year.
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