M-3 still missing speed cameras

Islamabad : The recent rape incident on the motorway failed to open the eyes of concerned authorities to provide missing facilities to the motorway police so that it can monitor and deal with crimes on the motorway.

It seems that the National Highway Authority (NHA) is helpless in front of its suppliers who failed to provide the fixed and moveable speed checking cameras as per the specifications of Motorway Police, whereas the NHA officials are not taking any action against the violation of the contract, which has caused a huge losses to the national exchequer.

Since the inauguration of Lahore-Abdul Hakeem Motorway (M-3) in April 2019 National Highways and Motorway Police (NH&MP) is repeatedly complaining about non-operation of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), as NHA failed to deliver the complete system to them.

NH&MP Inspector General in a letter to NHA the chairman has revealed the missing facilities on Lahore-Abdul Hakeem Motorway.

The letter revealed that only 13 out of 63 Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) cameras and 18 out of 124 fixed cameras are working, whereas, only recording of 23 cameras out of 31 working cameras is taking place at the Traffic Control Centre (TCC).

Cameras supplied by Zahir Khan and Brother (ZKB) are tripping and fluctuating which is hampering the monitoring process of surveillance badly. Moreover, the blind spots between the two installed cameras about 1 km in the daytime and more than 3 km at night.

The letter further revealed that as per the contract agreement, no video surveillance analytic application had been developed to generate any alert for effective monitoring of the carriageway. The total uptime of the surveillance cameras during the month of August 2020 was 23 per cent for ZKB and 12 per cent for CR20G.

Letter further states that as per the agreement both portable and fixed speed-checking cameras were to deliver to NH&MP before the day of the inauguration of M-3, but not a single portable camera had been given to NH&MP and following issues were being faced by NH&MP while checking over-speeding with fixed Auto Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras.

First, all speed gantries were down on 25th September from 1300 hrs. Second, calibration of all speed gantries had not been done since their installation so they were generating inaccurate speed and road users were registering their complaints on Prime Minister Citizen Portal and it was creating a bad image of NH&MP in the eyes of the public. Third, the vehicle capturing ratio was about 70 per cent instead of 95 per cent mentioned in the contract agreement. Fourth, no section speed was generated as all toll plazas were not configured with SES. The fifth, system was not fully capable to classify between HTV and LTV as NHSO 2000 have different speed limits for both types of vehicles. Sixth, number plate reading errors were also observed i.e. missing digits and alphabets and wrong capturing. Seventh, gantries were not installed as per contract obligations, they had to be installed at every 10 km but they were installed on interchanges the distance of approximately 40 km to 50 km.

IG Motorway Police letter revealed that out of 15, only one software was provided to NH&MP for road monitoring and traffic violations.

It is pertinent to mention here that all aforementioned issues had already been communicated to concerned authorities of NHA even before the inauguration of M-3 but no improvement was noticed so far. Furthermore, maintenance services as well as the deployment of technical staff at TCC has also not been taken place. Most importantly, the main part of the project, the Auto Alert System, is still missing.

Obsolete technology known as the inducted loop is being used for speed measurement instead of Radar technology which is not effective and it was generating inaccurate/wrong speed. It was also observed that no mechanism of wireless communication with Beat from TTC was available, which is indispensable for the fruitful utilization of this modern system.

When ‘The News’ contacted NHA, to get its version the department replied that the contractor responsible to install Intelligent Transport System (ITS) along Motorway M-3 (Lahore-Abdul Hakeem) is still in process of completing its work. “As and when the job will be completed by the contractor, the system will be handed over to the National Highway Authority. After that NHA will be responsible for its proper operationalisation,” it stated.

The NHA reply shows that they bother least about the speed monitoring system, as a bad name is given to NH&MP as they are responsible to control fatal accidents by checking speeding. It is pertinent to mention that M-3 was inaugurated on April 1, 2019. More than one-and-a-half year has passed despite that the facilities are still missing which are supposed to be available before the opening of M-3.

After a lapse of more than 18 months, either the favourite contractor should be fined, or the part of the contract for supplying should be cancelled and NH&MP should be allowed to purchase the speed monitoring at their own specifications.