Advanced vehicle monitoring technology

202 Pips Technology has commissioned two Journey Time Measurement Systems (JTMS) in Gravesend and Tunbridge Wells for Kent Highway Services (KHS) in the UK. The JTMS locations consist of 34 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras and JTMS software all provided by PIPS Technology.

The PIPS JTMS solutions installed in Kent both feature a network of award-winning P372 integrated Spike ANPR cameras, linked by wireless communications to the JTMS software. The Spike cameras are able to read the number plate of every vehicle that passes and sends time stamped and encrypted data back to the JTMS server.

The JTMS server calculates journey times from the data collected and forwards them to a common database which calculates journey times from systems all over Kent. To calculate the journey time the JTMS database uses the data transmitted from PIPS cameras and calculates how long it takes each vehicle to travel from one part of the network to another. From this an average time is calculated so that users know how well the traffic is flowing. Journey time data is useful as it can be transmitted to the roadside to communicate travel times to drivers by variable message signs (VMS) and allows planners to see areas of the road network which are not flowing as they should.

The system in Kent is being used to monitor journey times and alert operators in the KHS Traffic Management Centre of possible congestion and delays on the network. In total there are 21 different camera sites featuring PIPS Spike cameras spread across the two individual project locations, all of which are on single lane carriageways.