Parking for profit, and how we can help

Well, I have been taking photos with my cell phone camera in the hope that something can be done - but I dont really thing anything will do anything. Once I tried to reason with a guy who had blatantly parked his Scorpio on a narrow street opposite to some parked bikes and in front of a no parking sign clogging the road. There was plenty of legal parking about 20 mts away but this guy couldnt be bothered. When I reasoned with him saying 1. Dont you think traffic is bad in Bangalore 2. Isnt there a no parking sign here he said - the city should ban registration of new vehicles and that the sign, which was clearly a legal sign - was put up by the residents so wasnt valid. When I argued a little more he got angry and told me to mind my own business. I of course, took some photos to alleviate my frustration. I think what makes me very pessimistic is that there is no will of the people to make a change - especially in Bangalore. They have this Swalpa adjust madi attitude which is destroying the city. And there is this myth of Indian politeness and hospitality - but the reality is that we are incredibly selfish. People do whatever suits them and could not be bothered to think about anyone else. I dont think this is going to change very easily. The only hope is stringent application of the law - but I dont think we have the will for that. Bangalore Police are too busy shutting down music performances to bother about traffic offenders.

I'd say lets start it right here! Lets make a seperate section which accepts pitcures of all sorts of violations (traffic/FAR, Byelaws/Illegal tree cutting etc etc) minus personal information and vehicle registration numbers.

In the next meeting with Mr Sood, we can show our Crime Database to him and see if he likes the idea and wants to do it himself.

1) Have a centralized database of the city roads in the form of GPS coordinates (gps coordinates sampled at appropriate intervals).

2) Let's say a street has no parking, the database will have entries in the form of coordinates indicating the  no parking.

3) Let's say a car is parked in the no parking zone. The car should be equipped with an RFID number plate and some mechanism where a device pointed at it from close range can extract data like vin number, license plate number, speed, direction the car is pointed etc.

4) Authorized citizen or the police...when they spot the parked car...all they need to do is point the device at the car to gather all the information and relay it to the central system which uses it's database to interpret that the car is in a no parking zone.

5) To make it more effective along with the above data a timestamped photo/video can be transmitted.

Expensive and ambitious idea? Yes, but think of the advantages ->

1) scalabale for moving violations like speeding, violating a one way street etc. by just adding more rules in the centralized system.

2) automated collection of data that can be a goldmine for tracking repeat offenders, used as a reporting tool for authorities to understand the pattern of traffic violations to take corrective actions(corrective actions could be improving signage, more police personnel etc.)

One thing we need to keep in mind is that any long term solution requires some investment. I am sure that with mass production and judicious use of tax money some such system may be possible since quite a lot of this technology exists and what remains is integration, adaptation for this use & proper execution.

I agree, I guess we are looking at a simplistic solution where an image can be taken which then would be transmitted in a tamper proof manner along with GPS data to law enforcement. I think this may be possible provided it is a one step process as far as the end user is concerned to prevent any tampering of the image. Something like I set the cellphone to a particular mode when capturing a traffic violation image; then clicking the button should trigger this ->

1) Software captures the image,

2) captures additional data like GPS coordinates plus timestamp and perhaps some other data (the device number of the cell phone perhaps?)

3) encrypts the image & the additional data using  some encryption algorithm

4) transmits the encrypted data.

5) deletes the image.

All these need to happen in sequence at one shot without intevention from the user to ensure integrity of the image. 

Time is not far away when traffic police can use satellite imagesalong with GPS (anyway the tree cover in Bangalore is reducing :-( ) for catching traffic violations. May be there will be a rule in future to paint number plates on top of vehicles also!

From Wikipedia:

GeoEye-1 satellite is scheduled for launch Aug. 22, 2008. The GeoEye-1 satellite will have the highest resolution of any commercial imaging system and be able to collect images with a ground resolution of 0.41-meters or 16 inches in the panchromatic or black and white mode.

Sanjay

Of course it would be wonderful if this actually works. But the more effective it is - that is, the more people stop violating the law - the less money is made. But before it can be implemented it is also important that the Police put proper signs and provide - with some thought - options for parking. The way things stand the reason why things are chaotic is that its never really clear what is allowed as the signs are bad and arbitrary - quite often placed without any thought.