UPDATE Occupant count system declared go

UPDATE

Occupant count system declared go

The officer in charge of HOV enforcement in Dallas TX who has been reviewing tests of a new vehicle occupant counting technology says the system’s now working great and he wants to run with it. Koorosh Olyai, assistant VP Mobility Programs Development at Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) says the High Occupancy Vehicle Enforcement and Review (HOVER) system that has been tested the past 7 months on an HOV lane on the I-30 Thornton Fwy in the ‘mixmaster’ ramps of downtown Dallas is now proven to his satisfaction as a viable product.

“I am very happy indeed with it. We had problems to work through, but it’s now working extra well. I’m most pleased. I am going forward with it.” Olyai said he was applying for money in the agency budget to buy systems.

The occupant count system was developed and set up by Transfo Inc of Dallas TX in conjunction with Computer Recognition Systems, the UK/Massachusetts specialist in license plate recognition and other video technologies. Jeff Woodson of Transfo told us that as far as he is concerned the system works and is available for use in the field. He is talking to “five or six” prospective customers.

The system makes use of 3 to 5 cameras mounted by the roadside and special lighting. Each deployment needs at least one rear camera to get the license plate, a second to get the front and a third at the side to ‘see’ into the rear seat area, with extra cameras depending on the geometry of the site.

The system registers legitimate HOV-lane users, recognizing them from the rear license plate reads and optical character recognition algorithms, so as to concentrate the intrusive photography on unknown vehicles. As presently set up the system present pictures of suspect violators to police in a trailer who can radio details of vehicles they want pulled over to a cop in a cop-car downstream.

DART’s Olyai says this in itself will halve the police he needs for enforcement. But he is also going to argue for legislative changes to allow “ticket by mail” in which HOV violators can be nailed with photographic evidence alone, eliminating the need for the policeman downstream to pull over offenders and be a court witness to their violation if they choose to challenge the ticket.

The field test that started in September 1997 will continue into the summer. DART police are manning the trailer with Transfo tweaking the equipment.

Olyai said the system was working poorly at first in low light conditions after the sun had fully set. In January Transfo pulled out the lights and installed a new type of lights and Olyai says this solved the problem. Woodson says the challenge is to get a combination of flood and spot lighting that is sufficient to illuminate the rear seat area without being so bright that it startles the driver and constitutes a hazard.

CRS developed an into-the-vehicle video system for the London police which combines with license plate recognition to detect IRA terrorists driving into the area on motorways and other approach roads to try prevent bombings in the British capital. The system is credited with apprehending many terrorists.

In the US major uses of the system could be measurement of vehicle occupancy for statistical purposes. USDOT requires regular surveys of vehicle occupancy on HOV lanes it helped fund and observer-counters are expensive and of doubtful accuracy. HOV/HOT-lane enforcement is the other area.

The Dallas project is being formally evaluated by Shawn Turner of the Texas Transportation Institute. He says that based on data he collected prior to the Jan-Feb lighting improvements the system is excellent for collection of occupancy statistics and that it will be helpful in normal light conditions in screening vehicles so that a policeman downstream can operate more effectively. Beyond that he is reserving judgement until there is more data collected and testing in real time dispatch of data. He has not yet seen the operation under improved lighting systems. He says his final report should be complete by the fall. (See TRnl#19 Sept 97 p5, Contacts Koorosh Olyai DART 214 749 2866, Jeff Woodson Transfo 713 952 7494 www.transfo.com, Shawn Turner TTI 409 845 8829)