Use IT To Streamline Traffic Chaos

Bangalore’s traffic woes may come down soon, thanks to TELiBRAHMA Convergent Communications, a Bangalore based technology start-up, which has developed a solution exclusively for the Bangalore Traffic Police to help them streamline back-end processes. The solution is expected to help reduce the traffic chaos that are a nightmare for residents of India’s IT capital today, by ensuring better compliance from road users.Customized SolutionUsing the solution that comes packaged with a RIM Blackberry handset powered by Airtel and a Bluetooth handheld printer, traffic police personnel can check if an offender has any past record and the fine/punishment can be defined based on the frequency of offence. The application prompts the police officer to feed in a few details about the offender, which will help the police in pulling up the offender's history and other required details.The solution also helps police personnel to determine if the vehicle was stolen or whether the driver had incurred any fine that is still unpaid. The officer can also generate a bill, print and issue it and collect the payment on the spot. In case the offender is unable to pay, another challan can be generated that will state that payment is due and mention the date with the category of offence. Solution ArchitectureTo enable seamless integration with messaging sources like MS Exchange and Lotus Notes, TELiBRAHMA has designed this solution based on BES server. According to them, the architecture used is secure as it does not allow external network access to the offenders database. Only authorized internal network users will be able to access the database. The above architecture comprises of 3 different components:The BES server provided by RIM Blackberry allows the integration of a wireless platform to the existing application securely, in addition to offering other advantages such as push-based access to e-mail; calendar, contacts, tasks and notes; instant messaging; Web-based applications and services; and enterprise applications. Narasimha Suresh, CEO, TELiBRAHMA said, “We are a company completely focused on mobility. This particular solution has received a great reception from the police. They were ready for the technology—in fact, more than we expected, and thus we were happy to work on the project. Phase One of the project is almost through and we will soon see the rollout of phase two with a lot of features added to the application. The project will have 300 Blackberry 8700G handsets, packaged with a portable printer, being provided to police personnel in the city. It was impossible for the police to track repeated violators and fine them appropriately, but now they will easily be able to pull up the history of every offender in the city if caught for an offence once. The devices are networked to a central server, allowing traffic personnel to swiftly access crucial information to identify and apprehend offenders. We will be training police personnel for all the upgrades that will be included in the application in the coming phases.”
Second PhaseSome of the features that would be added in the second phase of the Bangalore Traffic Police solution would include features such as the charge sheet—the Bangalore Traffic Police will be able to issue documents related to the charge sheet to offenders on a day-to-day basis. Servers will be installed at police stations, which will be networked with a central server. Every day, the police officer concerned can take printouts of the charge sheet, thus avoiding any delays in challan issuance. The data for the charge sheet will be pulled from the central server. The first phase involved access to a few of the major offences and the second phase deals with access to all the offences related to traffic, such as reckless driving, overspeeding, overloading, drunken driving, refusing a hire, demanding excess fare, no entry, HTV Prohibited, without uniform, carrying excess school children, riding without a helmet, zig zag driving, parking at a BMTC bus stop and riding on the footpath.A personal computer with a DSL connection and printer has been installed at local stations, which will help police personnel to generate police notices, CRR and charge sheets. Even in the event of network failure, the offline truncation feature will save the records locally and will push the data to the central servers once the network is restored.Police ConvincedN. Narasimhaiah, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Traffic, Bangalore, said, “We are happy with the way the project is taking shape through all the phases of implementation. We are looking forward to this technology being implemented completely and are convinced that this will help us streamline many issues that we currently face. There are a lot of things to be done to get this project completed, such as installation of a few more servers from IBM. We presently have three servers at the support center. The data is sent from the Transport Commissioner's office to the authority centres. In Asia we are the first traffic police force to deploy such an application. All the data is online and thus accessible to all responsible authorities. The data is constantly monitored and thus staff working with the data will always be conscious with all entries and changes made. This will also help reduce and control corruption within the department. Each set of device has cost us Rs. 41,000 and the project on the whole has cost us Rs 2 crore.”Focused On The FutureAfter this, the police and the vendor are confident in implementing many other features. TELiBRAHMA reportedly is already in talks with many other state police departments to implement the same solution. Suresh, stated, “We are talking to other cities and states like Mysore, Rajasthan and few more southern Indian states regarding the implementation of the solution. We are also working next on a face recognition application, especially for the crime branch, security agencies and law enforcement authorities. The application is almost ready to be implemented, negotiations are on and we are expecting the first deal to come through by the end of this year.”“After this solution becomes completely operational, we are planning many additional steps to support it. There will be cameras put up in multiple traffic junctions in the city to monitor traffic on a real-time basis. Red light cameras by Delhi-based Turbo Consultancy and enforcement cameras by Mumbai-based Zicon are also planned. 40 to 50 Variable Message System (VMS) will be put up at all traffic congestion spots so that traffic can be easily diverted or redirected. The traffic through out the city will be synchronized automatically as BEL will maintain the traffic lights,” added Narasimhaiah.