If all goes as per plan, the city may have a traffic signalling system powered by artificial intelligence by 2025. Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited has floated a tender for AI-based upgradation of 165 traffic signals and March 30 is the last date to submit bids.
The Adaptive Traffic Control System (ATCS) technology will be applied to the junctions in about 17 corridors. “Bengaluru has either fixed-time signals or manually operated ones. The new technology will set the timings based on vehicular inflow as the signals will talk to each other and prioritise freeing up high-density corridors.
This will lead to optimisation of time. If you save 10 seconds at 10 signals, it may seem like just 100 seconds, but it is a considerable amount of travel time,” elaborated Rathnakar Reddy, transportation expert at Infra Support Engineering Consultants Pvt Ltd, the firm hired by the state for preparing the detailed project report.
As per the tender issued earlier in March, companies are invited to bid for the work of upgrading and synchronising 136 existing traffic signals to adaptive traffic controlling, along with applying the ATCS tech to 29 new signals at junctions that are currently ‘unsignalised’. Reddy said: “Unsignalised means a junction or median that is currently operating without a signal.”
Upgradation of traffic signals is the next big project to be undertaken for improving Bengaluru’s vehicular and pedestrian traffic movement after MA Saleem took charge as the special commissioner of police (traffic).
ATCS will also have an Emergency Vehicle Priority System that will create a green corridor for ambulances, fire engines and other such vehicles. The emergency vehicles will need to install Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP)-approved transponders that will help the ATCS sense the vehicle and manage its movement without the emergency responders needing to communicate with BTP.
Some basic software components of ATCS are Composite Signalling Cost Strategy application and Traffic Signal Monitoring and Managing Software under the software suite provided by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. Cameras, transponders, cables, timers, solar panels etc. are needed for building ATCS infrastructure.