|
Traffic imaging covers a range of current and potential applications. These include traffic control and analysis, license plate finding, reading and storage, violation detection and archiving, vehicle sensors, and toll collection/enforcement. Experience from commercial installations and knowledge of the system requirements have been gained over the past 10 years. Recent improvements in system component cost and performance now allow products to be applied that provide cost effective solutions to the requirements for truly intelligent vehicle/highway systems (IVHS). The United States is a country that loves to drive. The infrastructure built in the 1950s and 1960s along with the low price of gasoline created an environment where the automobiles became an accessible and intricate part of American life. The United States has spent $DLR103 billion to build 40,000 highway miles since 1956, the start of the interstate program which is nearly complete. Unfortunately, a situation has arisen where the options for dramatically improving the ability of our roadways to absorb the increasing amount of traffic is limited. This is true in other countries as well as in the United States. The number of vehicles in the world increases by over 10,000,000 each year. In the United States there are about 180 million cars, trucks, and buses and this is estimated to double in the next 30 years. Urban development, and development in general, pushes from the edge of our roadways out. This leaves little room to increase the physical amount of roadway. Americans now spend more than 1.6 billion hours a year waiting in traffic jams. It is estimated that this congestion wasted 3 billion gallons of oil or 4% of the nation's annual gas consumption. The way out of the dilemma is to increase road use efficiency as well as improve mass transportation alternatives.
|
