The launch of the R28 million South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) project to monitor traffic trends and conditions along the Ben Schoeman highway, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, has been delayed.
Project manager Alex van Niekerk says the pilot project to install 70 closed-circuit television cameras, between the Shell Ultra City, on the N1, and New Road, in Midrand, in a South-bound direction, would most likely not be ready to go live by the end of this month.
This, he says, is due to a delay in the manufacturing of electronic boxes for monitoring infrastructure.
"The fibre optic backbone is in place and the poles have already been erected. We hope to launch before the end of the year, but it`s difficult to say when exactly the pilot will be in place," Van Niekerk explains.
The idea behind this project, he says, is to gather information regarding traffic problems, trends and conditions, which will be communicated to emergency services and disseminated to the public, warning motorists about potential traffic issues along a particular route.
Van Niekerk says following the completion of the pilot, the project is expected to be officially launched in March and information gathered through the project will be distributed via a Web site, SMS, radio reports and variable electronic signs along the road.
Tagged vehicles
Meanwhile, Sanral is testing the feasibility of the electronic vehicle identification (EVI) component of the project, which relies on 915MHz radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to gather information about vehicles travelling along the Ben Schoeman.
Van Niekerk says tag readers have been installed along the highway between the John Vorster Drive and the Buccleuch interchange, and 1 000 tags have, so far, been handed out to volunteers who are participating in the study. However, this part of the study is also running behind, as Sanral had initially intended to have distributed 3 000 tags by now.
These tags are installed in vehicles whose movements are then recorded by RFID and optical devices installed along the highway, which will allow Sanral to monitor traffic movement and gather information about travelling time and speed.
However, Van Niekerk stresses that this information will not be used for law enforcement purposes, but will provide motorists with information about the traffic situation along the Ben Schoeman, including information about traffic congestion and accidents, as well as an estimated time of travel.
"We have started capturing information and are busy with system configuration and the development of appropriate algorithms."
The EVI project, Van Niekerk adds, will be extended to along the M1 highway, to Empire, and the additional section will cost R8 million and will be funded by the Johannesburg Roads Agency.
Related stories:
Roads Agency plays tag on highways
RFID number plates introduced
Share