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In the city, drivers have been surprised with the small cameras that are appearing installed on the tips of traffic lights or near pedestrian zebras or, even, in long tubes painted yellow and black in the separators.
(Four out of five photographs are captured by life-saving cameras)
It is not that the city is filling up with cameras to capture in flagranti drivers who cross red lights or exceed speed, as is the case with the so-called life-saving cameras, of which there are 72 (in 41 crossings), authorized by the National Road Safety Agency and 37 more conventional ones.
The small devices, which have caused curiosity and even alarm in some citizens, are part of the intelligent traffic light system, an initiative that the Enrique Peñalosa administration launched in 2018 and aims to streamline vehicular traffic in the city, mainly in those most critical intersections.
That system, with a cost close to 185,000 million pesos, according to the Ministry of Mobility, should have come into operation last August; However, it suffered delays, caused, among other reasons, by restrictions in the first peak of the pandemic and massive protests in 2019.
Today, the contract is 87 percent complete, within which the video detection component is 92 percent, that is, of the 1,912 smart cameras defined, 1,761 are already installed, mainly in Usaquén, Suba, Chapinero, Kennedy and Engativá. Mobility expects that all cameras will be in operation in the first half of this year.
There are several types of cameras that have been installed on city roads: some to control traffic lights, others to measure the lines and others for pedestrians.
(Bogotá, among the cities with the worst vehicular traffic)
The intelligent traffic light system consists of cameras with their respective controllers (they are the ‘brain’ of traffic lights and are connected to a central) and is being implemented in 54 road intersections and 240 add-ons at pedestrian and bi-user crossings.
But in addition, they have detector cameras – located in strategic places and with a wide field of vision – that allow us to establish the distance of the queue when the traffic light is red and how many cars pass green. Everything is operated from a traffic light central, located at the headquarters of the Ministry of Mobility.
With these devices, traffic variables in the city are measured in real time and traffic light programming can be adjusted according to mobility behavior, which benefits all road users.
“By working together, elements on the road and the central platform, benefits will be achieved in reducing waiting times for red traffic lights, mainly at intersections where these sensors will be implemented to measure traffic variables”, indicates the district entity.
(Life-saving cameras: what do we do?)
The system was outdated
This system is replacing another that is more than 20 years old and was operated with copper cable from three centrals, which had become obsolete and did not allow the entire network to be connected from a large central, and there were areas that were not connected.
Since 2002, the city has made several attempts to update the traffic light system, but has been unable to. Only in 2018, as several experts explained to EL TIEMPO, was the decision made to change the technology that was used, which only had one supplier. Now it is an open technology, that is, in the market there are several companies that comply with the standards.
“The principle of a traffic light in a city is to coordinate that the traffic lights from one point to the next and to the next and the next … are coordinated so that the traffic can flow as well as possible. And when you have intersections so often in a dense city like Bogotá, the flow of traffic depends on those intersections being well coordinated, ”explains Alejandro Forero, former advisor to the Ministry of Mobility in the previous administration.
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It is estimated that the intelligent traffic light system that is being enabled reduces vehicle travel time by 30 percent. In other words, according to Forero, if the average trip of a tour is 1 hour, you could be saving between 15 and 20 minutes.
That reduction, he says, can already be felt in the decrease in the size of the traffic jams, the elimination of return plans on weekends and in the times of the junctions of small roads with main ones.
Darío Hidalgo, mobility researcher, also says that the objective of intelligent traffic lights is that people who go by car and bus spend less time at traffic lights, and highlights that the system “gives more capacity to the road network, without build more lanes ”.
The expert also points out that in addition to reducing travel times, the system allows giving priority to public transport bus lanes, more time for citizens in pedestrian crossings, which results in greater safety, or even generating turns additional.
GUILLERMO REINOSO RODRÍGUEZ
Bogota Editor
@ Guirei24
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