This Article is From Oct 10, 2014

In Ahmedabad, a State-of-the-Art System to Help Commuters Avoid Traffic Jams

Ahmedabad: The Intelligent Traffic System, billed as the first-of-its-kind pilot project in the country, was launched in Ahmedabad on Friday. The system will alert commuters about traffic jams and suggest alternate routes with less traffic density.

The 14-camera based sensors would relay real time traffic situation onto four LED boards located on the 10-km stretch of the 132-feet ring road in the city.

This information will help commuters to avoid junctions with heavy traffic jams and take an alternate route.

"It will provide information on which roads have traffic jams -- where traffic is moving slow and on which stretches the traffic flow is smooth -- that will provide a cue to the commuters to use roads without such jams,'' said Joint Commissioner of Police, Traffic, H K Patel.

Civic officials say that the project took shape during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan and the Japan International Cooperation Agency or JICA funded this pilot project initiated jointly by Japanese firm Zero Sum and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation.

"It's a state-of-the-art system. The 14 sensors will detect speed of traffic, density of traffic and relay it wirelessly to the cloud based control centre which would eventually translate the information of an LED screen,'' explained B Mallesh, director of Japnese company Zero Sum,
Plans are afoot to extend the system to other parts of the city, hoping that it would ease the ever increasing traffic chaos on the roads.

"After this 10 km-stretch. we plan to introduce this technology in other parts of the city after March.'' said President of Zero Sum, Chikara Kikuchi.

But with over 600 vehicles added to city roads daily, it remains to be seen how effectively the system will handle the ever-increasing traffic chaos on the roads of Ahmedabad.
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