City cameras now watch your car, but not you City cameras now watch your car, but not you (May 10, 2002)

New system should improve traffic flows
by Jeb Bing

If you're traveling on some of Pleasanton's busiest streets, smile, you might be on a computer screen in City Hall. Not you, probably, but certainly your car, its color, speed, and where it is queued on heavy volume streets.

So far, 20 traffic detection cameras have been installed atop light poles, mostly along Hopyard Road. Wired to a computer bank in the Traffic Engineering Department in the Civic Center, they show traffic situations in real time. They also show puzzling movements, such as four or more cars lined up in one or two lanes at Hopyard and Stoneridge while a third lane remains empty. The cameras can detect illegal turns and other violations, but no one is watching the monitors to apprehend these motorists nor does the quality of the image offer the capability to do so.

"These are not the much-publicized 'red light' cameras that are designed to record violators and take photos," explained Jeff Knowles, Pleasanton's Deputy Director of Public Works and Traffic. "These are completely different types of cameras that allow us to monitor traffic and send signals to our computerized signals about oncoming traffic, vehicles in turn lanes and traffic backups. While we can bring up an image showing traffic conditions at any given time, this is really an advanced computer system to keep traffic flowing even better."

The cameras and computers are part of a $4 million project in Pleasanton, Dublin and Livermore that is being funded by federal, state and local funds. Once in place, the three cities will have more than 100 cameras at key intersections with computer interface connections to alert each other about traffic emergencies that could be a problem for the Tri-Valley area.

Pleasanton is the first to install the cameras, using fiber optic cable already in place at major intersections. The new system replaces the copper wires buried under pavement in front of signals to detect oncoming traffic, and the old metal pressure plates that were used 30 years ago. Because the cameras can look at the entire intersection and farther down the street, traffic lights are being programmed for faster responses as volume builds. A single car waiting at Parkside and Hopyard, for example, might wait longer now if the camera shows a steady stream of rush hour traffic heading down Hopyard. Any malfunction in a signal also sounds an alarm, enabling Robert Hudson, a traffic control technician, to dispatch a repair crew.

Hudson already sits at a computer next to a wall-size board that shows green and red lights around town, but no photos. The board, designed 20 years ago, is remarkable for its projections in 1981 about which streets would be built or extended and where the busy intersections of the 21st Century were likely to be. The Bernal Loop is shown as completed, Stoneridge Drive is extended, and the traffic lights and patterns in Hacienda Business Park are in place - all ahead of their time.

With the cameras, Hudson and Knowles will be able to gain more information about traffic backups, cut-through traffic and street speeds that will help them project, design, build and widen streets and intersections for the next 20 years.