CA Traffic, one of the UK’s specialist suppliers of traffic monitoring and ANPR equipment, has recently completed an accurate journey time, origin and destination survey in Northamptonshire.
In order to assess the A45 Flore/Weedon bypass scheme, consulting company MGWSP, on behalf of Northamptonshire County Council, was commissioned to conduct the survey covering 55 routes on the network of roads between Daventry and Northampton. The requirement was for a 12-hour survey to be undertaken with highly accurate results. The only methodology to provide this was ANPR. The next challenge was how to deploy so many cameras, get the data back to a server system and provide a system upon which to construct the link configurations.
As with many large surveys the ‘window of opportunity’ was brief and the scale of the ANPR commitment was extensive. MGWSP looked to CA Traffic to supply their Evolution ANPR data management system and EVO8 ANPR cameras. Bernard Greene, managing director of CA Traffic says, “Evolution was conceived to be simple to use and sufficiently flexible to be used for permanent and temporary applications. We were pleased to be given this opportunity to demonstrate the system’s capability in the temporary application.”
With a total of 43 lanes requiring coverage the EVO8 (dual-lane camera) was used to cover both dual-carriageway sites and single carriageways with bi-directional traffic.
Working closely with MGWSP, CA undertook detailed site surveys of the specific areas to establish the most suitable mounting arrangements for the cameras, such as lighting columns, demonstrating a unique aspect of the flexibility of the Evo8 camera.
The battery-powered cameras, capable of providing continuous power for over 24hr, were installed to monitor and gather data on the routes for two 12-hour periods. The survey operation was undertaken during major road works in the area over a consecutive three-day period, with the cameras being installed and removed on day one and three, the survey being completed on day two.
All cameras were fitted with GPRS modems that returned the ANPR data in 1min blocks to CA Traffic’s Evolution server, which comprises a multi-client web server with security credentials the client can access via his normal desk top browser. The server system is configured by the client using secure access permissions, site location, link configuration etc. The web server system is available for local installation or international access over the Internet. The same data was also stored locally in each camera to safeguard against any problems with communications but this was not required.
Post-survey, the data was retrieved from the Evolution server and processed off-line using an adaptive journey time measurement system. This system differentiates between journeys made by vehicles using different routes between the origin and destination points, and also detects and removes long journey times resulting from vehicles stopping en route.
Three forms of deliverable data were supplied:
- Raw data for ad-hoc analysis (time-stamped ANPR recognition data)
- Individual vehicle journey times throughout the day for each route
- Average vehicle journey times for each route for each 15min period
The survey provided valuable information and feedback to MGWSP and was the first such survey of this scale to be completed by CA Traffic. Bernard Greene comments, “We are very pleased to be able to deliver the solution to MGWSP and the results of the survey. This clearly demonstrates we met the operational elements of the scheme. There was a small timeframe to complete the installation of the cameras at various locations and, through CA providing the entire system, ANPR and Evolution data management, this saved time and money, making the exercise very cost-effective.”
