OT TV traffic cams, why is direction not given

[mm]

OT Why, after decades of showing live video of traffic on the expressways around here, do they continue not to include what direction the traffic is going? When the traffic is slow in one direction only, and it's never slow in both directions, I need to know which direction is slow.

Even the beltways, which basically curve in one direction don't always curve that way, so even with them, I can't tell which direction they are looking. Sometimes I can't tell which direction the road is curving.

Sometimes there is an N on the screen, but it's never clear if that means North of a certain location, that the camera is looking north, or that the traffic shown is going north.

[barry]

Let's go beyond that a bit, like the Dutch have. Since the '80s most major highways there have had sensors in each lane detecting speed of vehicles, at many locations. Not for big-brother policing, but to locate problem areas for traffic flow, so that guidance could be posted on roadside screens, for motorists to divert to alternate routes.

Seems simple enough, and can save huge amounts of person-hours, fuel, ulcers, etc.

Why are we so backward? :')

J

[JoeSpareBedroom]

We're talking about civil engineers, famous for not much.

First hand experience for me: Long Island Expressway. Same traffic slowdowns in the same places for almost 20 years. Every driver on that road knew what the causes were. We saw them every day. The state wouldn't listen. Finally, after many years, they installed cameras and found out.....can you guess? The problems were exactly as they'd been described by citizens at numerous public planning meetings.

Grand Central Parkway: At one point, there's a gradual incline which caused the majority of cars to slow down. So, even when traffic was the lightest, it would slow from 55 to 40-ish on that incline. Because even light traffic on Long Island means too many cars, the rubber banding would stretch back for miles. During rush hour, it was more of a nightmare. Someone got the bright idea to install a bunch of signs saying "Maintain speed up incline". It actually worked.

Where I live now, there's an incline that has the same effect. I called the NY DOT and mentioned to some genius that the signs had worked nicely on another highway. He says "Well, I doubt it would work here". I asked why. He said it was because it was a "different environment" or some such crap.

??????

[Goedjn]

Because advocating for such things does not translate into more votes ot more money, and lobbying for an extra lane does both. Why fix a problem if you can profit from it?

[Jim]

You left out the HOV lanes the nitwits forced on us. An extra lane used by best guess 2% of the traffic forcing the remainder to squeeze into the remaining two or three lanes.

And of course after whizzing by everyone else they now need to cut across all the other lanes to exit.

Thank the DOT for creating bottlenecks.

[mm]

So why do you think they don't tell us which way the traffic is going?

[mm]

That makes sense but I haven't seen any. The pictures are in black and white, and often in the dark, but even if they were in color in the daylight, their field of view is pretty much the road only. Also it takes a long time to learn where landmarks all. Why not just say the direction?

[JoeSpareBedroom]

Beats me. When you contacted the organization that provides the images, what did they say about it?

[mm]

I only can think to contact the tv station. And I think they just buy the service, so they probably won't know. Maybe I'll do it anyhow.

With an amplified antenna in the attic, I get news on at least 8 stations, 4 from Baltimore and 4 from DC (different highways in different cities of course), and I'm not even sure how many or which have traffic cams. I'll have to start making a list.

[Noozer]

More likely just the technology that they use. It's probably more work than they want to do to take the video feed and then overlay text on the image. I also doubt that they want to try and paint a tiny compass on the camera lens.