Central road making agency National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has upgraded the Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) for enhanced road safety and digital enforcement on national highways and expressways. The enhancements include replacing previous VIDS cameras with the newly introduced Video Incident Detection and Enforcement System (VIDES) to emphasise the digital enforcement of traffic rules.
VIDES has the capability to identify 14 distinct incidents, including triple riding, helmet and seatbelt violations, wrong lane or direction driving, presence of animals on the highway, and pedestrian crossings, the statement said.
According to a NHAI statement, depending on the detected incident, VIDES will alert route patrol vehicles or ambulances, generate e-challans, relay alerts to nearby Variable Messaging Boards, or send notifications through the ‘Rajmargyatra’ mobile app to nearby travellers.
For comprehensive coverage, the statement said, these cameras are slated for installation every 10 km along national highways, with state-of-the-art command and control centres at every 100 km integrating various camera feeds.
Apart from this, Vehicle Speed Detection System (VSDS) is now integrated into VIDES, optimising the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras, it added. The Traffic Monitoring Camera System (TMCS) will also be upgraded, the statement said, adding that positioned every 1 km on the national highway, these cameras have been endowed with advanced capabilities like automated detection of accidents and stalled vehicles.
Strengthening collaboration with local traffic agencies, the statement said NHAI will allocate dedicated workstations in the command and control centre for traffic police representatives.
Moreover, provisions have been made to share camera feeds over the network to enhance real-time coordination and response. ATMS deployment may also play an active role in disaster management by providing inputs for effective planning and implementation.
It will also provide online sharing of highway status and other important information that will help both the agencies and the highway users. The statement said the policy also provisions implementation of Digital Highways by developing integrated utility corridors along the national highways to develop optic fibre cables (OFC) infrastructure.
While the ATMS equipment will use OFC to communicate with the command and control centre, there are provisions in the policy for 5G-based communication in the future as the coverage increases, it said.
Meanwhile Union Road Transport Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said the NHAI is facing difficulties in the preparation of detailed project reports, as companies concerned are not ready to accept new technology.
Addressing the ‘CRISIL India Infrastructure Conclave 2023’, Gadkari said big players in the steel and cement industry are indulging in cartelisation to jack-up prices. According to Gadkari, rating of companies that make DPRs is a big challenge. “The preparation of DPRs is a big problem for NHAI... There is no perfect DPR anywhere in any project,” Gadkari, who is known for his frank views, said.
“While making DPR, they (companies engaged in DPR making) are not ready to accept new technology, new innovation, new research and even the standard of DPRs are so low that everywhere (there is) additional scope of work,” he said.
The minister recalled that once upon a time, there were 50 big contractors who used to get contracts for road construction. “I felt that was not correct. (So) I liberalised the technical and financial norms, by which, today we have 600 big (road) contractors,” he said.
According to Gadkari, the problem is that some of them quote prices below 30-40 per cent for highway construction projects. “We need to maintain the equilibrium between the quality and the cost. And that is also a big challenge,” he observed.
