Decks have been cleared for the rollout of the Global Positioning System (GPS)-based vehicle tracking system with camera facilities in the 16,000 transport vehicles, including the private stage carriers and inter-State vehicles carrying petroleum products, plying in the State for real-time monitoring and enforcement.
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is executing the Rs.6.42 crore work for Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) after it was selected as the technical consultant-cum-service provider by the government. Developing road map platforms was the hurdle for the rollout of the GPS-based tracking system and it has been overcome, official sources told.
Data will be procured from Map my India for the map requirements of the vehicle tracking application of the MVD. The government has given the administrative sanction to C-DAC to procure the map data of the road network of the State at a cost of Rs.1.27 crore as it provides good coverage at a lower cost.
Discussions have been on with Google, Heremap, OpenStreet Map, KSDI, KSREC, Keltron and the KSEB during the last one year for the map requirements. Besides the low cost, sources said Map my India was selected and recommended by the State Transport Commissioner to the government as they were offering accuracy of 10 metres, tile version and swiftness needed for C-DAC.
The MVD has allocated the space in the Trans Towers, where the Transport Commisionerate function from Thiruvananthapuram, for setting up the Master control room for tracking the transport vehicles. The 17 mini-control rooms, including all the 14 district headquarters, have been set up. C-DAC had rolled out the application successfully during the last Sabarimala season. “The synchronisation of the map data of 3 lakh km of road network in the State has to be executed once it reaches us. We hope to roll out the facility by the year-end,” sources in C-DAC said.
The vehicle tracking unit installed in each vehicle and the 20-second pulse generated from it will be tagged and certified by the MVD. The inputs collected will first reach the common database and then will be given to the regional areas for monitoring as it is impossible to track all the vehicles at a single point.
Once the GPS-based vehicle tracking facility becomes live, the sleuths of the MVD will be able to know the location, speed, and direction of the vehicles it is heading. Time enforcement, another vexed issue of the private stage carriers, can be executed .
Over-speeding can be checked and speed restrictions enforced in front of schools and hospitals through geo-fencing, according to C-DAC. Already, the KSRTC has introduced GPS-based vehicle tracking in its select buses plying in the capital with the help of public sector Keltron.
