Traffic dept proposes system that uses images captured on strategically placed cameras to police vehicular flow in city

Expect smoother traffic on Pune roads in a year, if the traffic department's latest proposal to the Home Ministry for installation of access control software is cleared. While, the fate of the proposal will only be clear after the Lok Sabha elections, traffic department sources say the systems should be in place in a year, if the response is positive.u00a0u00a0

The software, which is being developed by a city-based firm, will use visual inputs collected through cameras installed at various spots in the city to identify recurrent patterns in the city's traffic flow. The projected cost of the new system is expected to be Rs 6.5 crore.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (traffic) Manoj Patil told MiD DAY that the system will keep a tab on every vehicle entering and leaving the city.

"We do have cameras installed at the moment, but there is no system in place to help us make sense of the huge data thus generated. It does not allow us to study the city-wide traffic flow minutely," said Patil.

"The traffic situation will only worsen in the next five years, as the number of vehicles in the city increases from four to 12 lakh. Even if we account for the improvement in the public transport system with the introduction of metro and monorails, we expect the traffic data generated in the years to come to be increasingly complex and unwieldy. The software will help us in a big way then," Patil added.