The city of Southampton on the UK’s south coast is using a new ALPR-equipped vehicle to enforce multiple traffic and parking violations in a bid to keep the city’s traffic flowing and enhance community safety.
Southampton City Council (SCC) has taken delivery of a new multi-purpose Videalert mobile enforcement vehicle, which supports multiple traffic enforcement and community safety applications simultaneously. The new vehicle will be used in conjunction with Videalert’s hosted Digital Video Platform that was recently installed as part of a project to introduce CCTV enforcement of bus lanes in key areas of the city.
The vehicle will patrol the city targeting vehicles that stop unlawfully on the ‘keep clears’ outside schools in response to complaints and concerns raised by parents and teachers whose children are being put at risk by irresponsible parking. It will also be used to enforce illegal parking at bus stops, which causes unnecessary delays for other road users and potentially puts people at risk.
The innovative mobile enforcement vehicle features a roof-mounted pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) camera and two roof mounted cameras that provide ALPR (automatic number plate recognition) and color image capture for evidence collection. Evidence packs will be downloaded from a USB for access and review by trained council operators, prior to sending confirmed offences to the back office processing system for the issuance of PCNs (Penalty Charge Notices).
Videalert provides a quick and easy three-click process to review evidence packs and produce PCNs. The packs are automatically created including still images and video footage comprising contextual information and close-ups of appropriate signage in the vicinity of the offence. Operators just have to validate number plates before exporting complete evidence packs to the back office PCN processing system.
The Videalert mobile enforcement vehicle has been procured through Balfour Beatty Living Places, which has a 10-year contract to manage all highway infrastructure assets on behalf of SCC. Brian Hammersley, contract manager at Balfour Beatty Living Places, commented, “This innovative mobile solution shows how quick and easy it is to expand Southampton’s existing enforcement activities using Videalert’s Digital Video Platform.”
According to SCC’s highway manager, John Harvey, “This new vehicle is easy and cost effective to deploy, as it integrates with our existing Videalert enforcement infrastructure. It will be used strategically across the city to enforce a range of parking contraventions and to enhance community safety.”
Tim Daniels, Videalert’s sales and marketing director, noted, “Our hosted Digital Video Platform shows that it can deliver significant benefits to councils, by enabling them to quickly extend enforcement to other areas without having to make further investment in IT infrastructure. This enables councils to achieve the highest productivity and the lowest operating cost to derive maximum benefit from available budgets.
“With the introduction of this new vehicle, we are now the UK’s only supplier with the ability to provide the full suite of CCTV traffic and parking enforcement solutions, comprising attended, unattended and mobile, using the same intelligent platform.”
