- Project ‘Alicante Se Mueve: Being Smart’ budget of €2,942,110.59
- Quote: ‘They are not speed control cameras, nor radars, as many people believe’ – Mayor of Traffic and Mobility of Alicante City Council, José Ramón González
By Andrew Atkinson
The project ‘Alicante Moves: Being Smart’ has commenced this month, with 156 cameras being installed for the recognition of license plates and traffic regulation, in 40 locations of the city, which will connect circulation in real time to innovate in the management system of traffic in the city.
The mayor of Traffic and Mobility of the Alicante City Council, José Ramón González, said: “The cameras are the visible part of a much more technically complex project that will make the city have a management system for the mobility and public transport at the highest technological level and unique in Spain”.
Answering rumours and calls to the Police about the installation, he said: “They are not speed control cameras, nor radars, such as much people believe”.
The civil works plan, carried out by the UTE IBERMÁTICA -IMESAPI, foresees that the entire technical infrastructure and installation of the cameras will be carried out for 12 weeks, which will support them to channel the additional fiber to the existing rings of the City Hall, estimated at about 2,200 meters of sidewalk ditch.
The Councillor for Mobility, José Ramón González, said: “It will allow a license plate reader system to give analysis to the movements of the vehicles, and a video surveillance, not only for the welfare of the inhabitants and for the quality of the environment, but for aspects as diverse as the support to people with reduced mobility”.
He added: “They will also be used for the management of the loading and unloading areas, the transport of safe goods around the city, smart parking, emission monitoring, establishment of priorities in emergencies, support for circulation and recharging of electric vehicles, intelligent traffic light management according to congestion, forecasting of incidents and immediate reaction”.
The project ‘Alicante Se Mueve: Being Smart’ has a budget of 2,942,110.59 euros, financed 60% by Red.es, an entity under the Ministry of Economy and Business, and 40% by Alicante City Council, with co-financing from the European Regional Development Fund, under the motto ‘A way to make Europe’. Among the works required to start up the traffic management and video surveillance system, the necessary civil works and occupation of public roads will be required, estimating that this phase will be completed by mid-October.
The City Council undertook tests in July, on three types of cameras, as a preliminary step to have in the city the 156 cameras in strategic points of the road network and their accesses, which will generate useful information from sensorization, acquisition and data processing in real time.
According to official sources, the technicians have chosen the one that has the best quality and reliability, which is higher than 95%.
The mayor of Traffic said: “We are also going to reduce pollution, reduce times in daily traffic, traffic jams, optimisation of itineraries, both for drivers in real time and for municipal services and, mainly for emergency services, and improve public services, such as the management of lighting, waste collection, irrigation, or any other municipal area”.
The City Council explained that at the same time the project is being developed on the basis of a city technological platform adapted to the UNE 178104 standard, which will allow the future integration of systems from other areas of municipal management, in order to use the latest technologies.
The project will be able to provide very useful data in the management of the city, which will be able to be used in various economic and academic sectors, providing many benefits for the municipality, its citizens and visitors.
The head of Traffic said the execution of ‘Alicante Se Mueve’ places the city at the forefront of innovation, achieving strategic information through artificial intelligence.
“It will create a global system in the city, that allows the use of our roads to be take it to the limit and make the best possible use of its capacity, and improve mobility and sustainability with optimal planning of traffic and travel in Alicante, both for vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles”.
‘Alicante moves’, is a project designed and created by the municipal technicians of the Traffic Department, which was selected and was the first with the highest score, among more than 100 proposals, submitted to the smart cities programme of Red.es.
