Visit To Bangalore's Traffic Management Center

 Would Like to join.

SB, i didnt know that the TMC has moved from the Ashoknagar police station/Commissariat Road. I knew that it had its own building coming up. is the new one on Infantry road??

I am in.

Sanjay 

to be part of this visit

- Sandeep.

I would like to join, can you please tell the exact address?

Please pardon my ignorance, where is the CBD?

The array of monitoring devices & other facilities at the TMC are quite impressive !

This is the most sophisticated TMC in the country, at present & about 160 cameras for monitoring traffic at various main street junctions have already been installed. Several more are under installation & all these cameras provide live /real-time pictures of signalized intersections. Signal phase time intervals can be manually changed based on traffic volume/s.

At a few locations, sensors have been placed to trigger inactivity & lack of traffic movement, & inputs from these sensors are used to change over the signal to green to waiting vehicles from another direction, thus limiting wait times to the minimum for vehicles at intersections & improving efficiency of traffic movement.

Inputs about the density of mobile phones in various areas is also monitored to provide traffic indications (airtel mobiles only, at present). Live GPRS feeds are also received from about 800 BMTC buses (all buses will be fitted with GPRS in the future). If bus movements slow down in a particular area, this would be another indication of traffic congestion at the location.

Remote monitoring of vehicles for traffic violations is another feature. With the aid of these cameras, duty personnel watch out for violations. About 800-1000 violations are detected each day & notices are being sent to vehicle owners.

Though we still have a long way to go to be on par with traffic monitoring /managing facilities in cities abroad, this is certainly a great start. The operators look well trained & quite up to the task.

vinod

Vinod - you can upload the pictures on flickr.com (create an account, if you don't have one).

The pictures can then be posted here.

 But isnt this the TMC that existed for a while now? I was under the impression there was a bigger one in a new building with lot more screens coming up to handle some 600+ cameras. Where is that?

Here I was criticizing and cribbing and always wondering why I was always stuck on a signal and waiting for the light to turn green, while the other side of the traffic always seemed to move easy and smooth.
Then me along with a group of people from praja were taken to a room with 5 Sony LCD screens (10 more on their way) on a wall and in the next 1 and half hours my cynicism was taken away from me :)

Courtesy the visit to Bangalore Traffic management center (organized by Mr. Sudhir) we got a chance to know a lot about the traffic management system in Bangalore.
The Visit began at 10:30am on 22 August 2009.
Mr. Saurabh Bhattacharya, a consultant working for PWC presently working with TMC give us a tour of the center.


With the help of technology and highly advanced equipment TMC performs the 3 major operations:
1.) Enforcement
2.) Congestion observation
3.) Traffic signal monitoring and control

Enforcement

Out of the 5 LCD screens, the first 2 displayed live video feeds from different junctions. With the help of sophisticated cameras its possible to zoom in and capture images of vehicles as well as their number plate in case of violation of any traffic rule for example car stopped on Zebra crossing etc.

The images are stored in case someone contests the ticket but these images are not sent along with the challans which in my personal opinion should  as they will have a greater effect.
These live feeds are provided by Bosch cameras which are installed and maintained by Zycon. There are around 160 such cameras all over the city and they are placed on a 8m high pole.

We were shown archived video which were taken during night time and to my surprise the picture quality was still good enough to figure out the number on the number plate

Everyday 800-1000 chalans are filed through this process though only 60% of these people actually pay up.

TMC has 24 tera byte storage which can save data up to 20 days.

This is the point where I began to wonder if it was a better idea to jump a red light than to cross the zebra crossing and stop :) But then we were taken to another workstation which was monitoring junctions using even more sophisticated camera which by the way cost a bomb (around 50 lakhs) These camera are capable of measuring the speed of a car and also taking images so that number plate can be identified.

So these camera can be used to fine cars who jump a red light or are speeding. Though due to cost concerns there are only 5 such cameras in Bangalore as of now. This workstation is maintained by a company called Turbo.

Congestion observation

The next 2 LCD screens displayed map of Bangalore. these 2 maps (provided by mapunity) can display roads with congestion.
There are almost 600 BMTC buses equipped with GPS. These buses can be used to detect congestion in an area.
Mean time that a bus should take at a particular time is already known, with the help of this data any deviation can be noted and hence congestion can be detected. There are different colors like green, red and orange provided to depict whether the bus is moving as expected or not. A bottle neck can be spotted if there is a point where red and green color meet.

Another way to detect congestion is through mobile phone density at a given time at any place. The data for this method is provided by Airtel. Though this method is not accurate as the first one.


Traffic Signal monitoring and controlling system.
With the help of data collected before hand, each signal is allotted a specific green light time which varies according to time (differs during office hours). This time slot for green light can be changed according to need.

There is a different dedicated workstation for this task and there different methods to do so. This workstation is maintained by Bharat electronics.

a.) Vehicle actuation: there are embedded loops(magnetic loops) which are placed under the road just before the stop line. It can sense whether vehicles are there or not, in case there are no vehicle then the system after waiting for 4 seconds automatically turns the next lane light to green.
b.) Video analytic: there are camera on all the 4 red lights on a junction monitoring the opposite side traffic (these are different from the earlier mentioned cameras) they are capable of counting the number of cars. with the help of this in case there is a congestion it can be known and the time of red/green light can be dynamically manipulated/changed.
c.) Signal progression: The time of red light on a signal and its duration is calculated with utmost care so that if one gets a red light then the next succeeding light should not be red again.
The distance between the 2 signals and the average speed are taken into consideration when these calculations are done.
d.) Area traffic controller: If with the help of method a or b the traffic lights are manipulated then c should be still valid. i.e all signals should be in sync such that one does not get 2 red lights in a row. This is done by area traffic controller.

Microsoft is working on providing them with an upgraded version of their software for traffic signal monitoring and manipulation.


Each signal can have the following:
1)signal (red/green/yellow light)
2)camera (for enforcement)
3)camera (to monitor congestion)

Data is taken from each junction with help of a 4mbps dedicated leased lines provided by BSNL.
The last of the 5 LCD displayed these connections to different signal.
These are point to point connection from each junction to the control center and the line is turned to red color in case of a failure and the junction is turned red in case of a failure there.


TMC also has an Integrated complain monitoring system (ICMS)
If there an IT fault anywhere in the system, then an interrupt is triggered and a SMS is sent to the concern person. Due to this system the mean time to repair has drastically improved.


TMC is doing an amazing job and even though there are a lot of suggestions that we can provide, still I think its important we acknowledge them for the kind of work they are doing in a city which has added 500 new cars everyday last year and has a vehicle growth of 10%
Thanks to Mr Sudhir and other employees we got a chance to know a lot about our traffic management system.
It was very nice of them to show us around and entertain our questions.
Let us hope we can arrange more of such enlightening visits.