One of the most common sights for highway commuters is of the traffic congestion at the toll plazas that often leads to hindrance in the normal flow of traffic. In order to resolve this recurring issue, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has come up with an interesting idea and planning to administer the installation of video surveillance system at these toll plazas for the real-time mapping of the vehicle flow.

The NHAI has planned to install the system in the ten major toll plazas around the country, and if the project will see the light of success, then National Highways Authority of India will extend the same to 200 toll plazas around the country. These toll plazas have been selected on the basis of the average flow of traffic they witness, selected 200 toll plazas to witness daily traffic flow of more than 10,000 vehicles.

What is Video-Surveillance System?

Under this project, each of the selected [b]Toll Plazas[/b] will be deployed with hi-tech cameras that are going to send the real-time feed to the regional offices’ traffic control room and also to NHAI’s headquarters. This 24X7 round the clock surveillance system will ensure the smooth flow of traffic in the peak hours of the day.

What is real-time feed?

The video surveillance system will constantly click time-stamped photographs at the toll plaza and send them to the regional traffic control room in regular intervals of 30 minutes. At the time of congestion, the automatic video cameras will switch to the video mode and these time-stamped videos will be sent to the ROs with an alert so that the officials in charge can resolve the issue at the earliest. If the issue is not resolved within an hour of its report, then the same feed with the alerts will be transferred to the NHAI headquarters for expert assistance in the resolution of the situation.

What expert has to say about it?

The installation of this innovative surveillance system is being taken care by the Chief General Manager (IT and Highway Operations) of NHAI, Mr Akhilesh Srivastava. In a recent interaction with the media, he said that the cameras are going to provide the pulse feedback along with the time-stamped photographs to the concerned regional offices and National Highway Authority of India’s command control rooms in every 30 minutes. The system has an imaginary IP line installed in all the toll plazas to monitor traffic congestion and when the traffic queue reaches that line, the camera automatically switches to video mode.

Apart from this, the NHAI is also working on integrating drone agencies to ensure the over-all and quick survey of the ongoing construction projects. This will help NHAI officials to monitor everything from one place.

By employing innovative and hi-tech information technology in various aspects of Highway Network, NHAI is proving that they are committed to change the face of Indian Highway Infrastructure soon, and it will transform soon enough to compete with the global standards.

For more details http://nhai.gov.in/