Mass transit railway stations get advanced car park technology to allow commuters faster access and smother travel across Hong Kong.
Our customer is a leading operator of sustainable rail transport services catering to the needs of over 13 million passengers in Hong Kong daily. They have extensive end-to-end railway expertise with more than 40 years of railway project experience from design to planning and construction through to commissioning, maintenance, and operations.
They are also involved in creating and managing dynamic communities around its network through seamless integration of rail, commercial, and property development.
Challenge
The existing car park facilities at the mass transit railway stations were using manual car plate verification procedures. All users, buses, engineering vehicles, and other authorized vehicles were manually checked by security officers at the gate. This caused traffic congestion entering the facilities and on the public drive lanes surrounding the entry gates.
In addition to the manual check and verification process, the delays were also a hindrance for ambulances and law enforcement rescue vehicles in an emergency. Time spent on verifying the vehicles and giving notification alerts may result in the delay of the rescue operations.
Approach
We designed a customized and specialized car-plate recognition system for the customer and installed the system at three different locations for further testing and trials. During this time, we studied the various vehicle types and numerous scenarios of vehicle movement, as well as performed a variety of simulations to derive an exclusive car plate recognition system for the customer.
A database containing all authorized vehicles’ car plates was created. The recognition system can now read the car plates and immediately cross-check with the database. Within two seconds, authorized vehicles are allowed entry without delay. With the new automated system in place, the physical presence of an officer is no longer required to manage the gate.
To improve access in an event of an emergency, we formulated an exclusive pattern-based verification technique to recognize ambulances and law enforcement vehicles’ car plates. While confirming their access, the system can simultaneously send an alert message to the control team of their presence at the facilities.
Result
The car park facilities at the mass transit railway stations are enjoying reduced waiting time for authorized vehicles and reduced traffic congestion around the entry gates. This greatly helped to cut down on manual operators and operation costs in managing the car park premises.
As emergency and law enforcement vehicles can gain immediate access to the premises there is higher safety and better risk management procedures in place at these locations.
As a result of the successful installation of the new systems, the customer is considering adopting the system into its centralized Operation Control Center so that all authorization registration for all internal and enforcement vehicles can be managed under one single centralized control.