F’bad-Agra NH to get advanced surveillance system

Bijendra Ahlawat

Tribune News Service

Faridabad, August 9

The 175-km long passage of National Highway (NH) 19 connecting Faridabad and Agra cities will soon get the Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) for better control and supervision of traffic movement on this highway.

How will ATMS help

• Will reduce the number of accidents and incident response time
• Dispatching remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) and ambulances on time
• Installation of pan-tilt cameras at every 1km
• Issuance of e-challans

Revealing this, sources in the NHAI said that the project of providing state-of-the-art surveillance systems was a part of the official policy for which a circular had been passed in 2016 and 2023. The ATMS aimed at reducing the number of accidents and incident response time, physical enforcement (route patrol vehicles) and the issuance of the e-challans (ddigital enforcement). “The recovery or assistance vehicles will be dispatched immediately to the exact camera location as soon as any incident takes place and detection will be done within a minute of the incident,” said an official. He said while the provisions of the ATMS had been already implemented in other projects completed in the recent past, the NH-19 was one of the projects that was yet to have such a system, though a provision had been existent.

‘’While nearly 35 to 40 per cent of the total casualties or injuries take place on the highways, the introduction of the ATMS system will help in reducing the number of casualties,” says SK Sharma, District Coordinator, Road Safety Organisation (RSO). “The work on ATMS for NH-19 is expected to take off soon as the tender has been released,” says Kamal Kant, a senior official of the NHAI.

Hindrances like the presence of cattle, breakdown of vehicles and accidents have been a common issue on the NH. ATMS has been a vital part of the measures to ensure smooth and proper traffic movement on national highways. The installation of the camera surveillance after every one kilometre will help in providing a continuous feed to the command centre for real-time viewing and tackling unforeseen mishaps by dispatching RPVs (remotely piloted vehicles) and ambulances on time. The ATMS system includes the installation of pan-tilt cameras (wwith night vision of 100 metres) at a particular distance.

The AI-enabled cameras will also be able to provide an overview, side view, edge based, radar (if needed) and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) facility to the command centre, it is reported. Besides, these videos are expected to be placed at every 10 km of the highway depending upon the location of incident-prone areas (black spots), clovers, interchanges and busy junctions.