The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is planning to implement a US$87m Area Traffic Control (ATC) project to improve traffic management and provide traffic information.

The project involves an ATC centre, field units including computer control boxes, traffic lights, closed circuit television (CCTV) and image-processing cameras.

The system automatically controls and adjusts traffic lights at intersections according to conditions of vehicle density, obtained from image-processing cameras working as vehicle detectors.

BMA’s Traffic and Transportation department aims to develop the ATC to control the entire traffic area automatically by integrating and pooling information from all of the city’s intersections into a central system.

The department will install more image-processing cameras by 2012 for complete integration.

The ATC Centre will be the operational hub for the entire transport system.