UK city deploys wireless sensors to reduce congestion

In a bid to cut congestion, Portsmouth City Council in the UK has installed a wireless vehicle tracking solution in the city. The system, from Danish wireless technology company Blip Systems, was deployed by the company’s UK partner Smart CCTV which has installed BlipTrack sensors on the three most-often congested roads linking to the M27/A27 east-west corridor.
November 19, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
In a bid to cut congestion, Portsmouth City Council in the UK has installed a wireless vehicle tracking solution in the city.

The system, from Danish wireless technology company 3778 Blip Systems, was deployed by the company’s UK partner smart CCTV which has installed BlipTrack sensors on the three most-often congested roads linking to the M27/A27 east-west corridor.

The sensors use data received from Bluetooth-enables devices in passing vehicles to measure journey times and speeds, enabling the council to provide queue warnings on VMS displays and mobile apps.   It also provides the city with valuable information about traffic flow for planning and optimising traffic.

According to Smart CCTV’s Managing Director Nick Hewitson, the installation of the BlipTrack sensors costs about one-tenth of the cost of an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system.  He said at a recent 288 ITS UK conference, “BlipTrack catches upwards of 40 per cent of vehicles, compared to with 95 per cent with ANPR, but this is statistically more than adequate for journey time information”.
Detection, Monitoring & Machine Vision

Related Content

  • March 19, 2014
    Flir helps Indonesia start tackling congestion
    Indonesia has started tackling acute traffic congestion in Jakarta and Surabaya. When talking about Jakarta, Indonesia’s economic, cultural and political centre, it is very easy to lapse into superlatives. With a population of over 10 million people it is the thirteenth most populated city in the world and the biggest in South East Asia. The official metropolitan area, known as Jabodetabek, is also the second largest in the world. Almost 98% of journeys in Jabodetabek are made by road and the tremendous
    Read More
  • January 23, 2012
    ANPR - cost-efficient traffic management, enforcement and more
    Geoff Collins of Vysionics Intelligent Traffic Solutions talks about the near-term prospects of ANPR. The continued absence of a champion for its cause is preventing digital enforcement technology from delivering the true levels of cost-effectiveness of which it is capable, according to Geoff Collins, sales and marketing director of ANPR specialist Vysionics Intelligent Traffic Solutions.
    Read More
  • June 7, 2012
    Camera technology a flexible and cost-effective option
    Perceptions of machine vision being an expensive solution are being challenged by developments in both core technologies and ancillaries. Here, Jason Barnes and David Crawford look at the latest developments in the sector. A notable aspect of machine vision is the flexibility it offers in terms of how and how much data is passed around a network. With smart cameras, processing capabilities at the front end mean that only that which is valid need be communicated back to a central processor of any descripti
    Read More
  • October 28, 2014
    Machine vision offers new solutions to old problems
    The transportation sector is set to benefit from a far wider range of machine vision technology. While machine vision techniques have been applied to traffic management applications for some years, in some areas there can still be a shortage of knowledge about what the technology can offer transportation professionals. The image processing and interpretation functions of machine vision enables control room staff to be immediately alerted to occurrences requiring attention which, in turn, enables each person
    Read More

Highlighted Content