Tainan City’s old town area is a very popular tourist destination and the traffic is often quite crowded during holidays. Tainan City Government Bureau of Transportation recently upgraded the smart road network dynamic signal system in the West Central District. The upgrade greatly improved traffic congestion issues in the main roads of the old town area and the results were presented at the Greater Tainan Smart Transportation Center on Jan. 12.
Mayor Huang Wei-che expressed that one of the responsibilities of the Smart Transportation Center is to monitor road conditions and adjust traffic signals accordingly. The upgraded system can automatically divert traffic during rush hours and effectively reduce traffic congestion.
Huang added that currently Tainan City does not have many exclusive bus lanes, but with the help of smart technology, public transportation vehicles can avoid being stuck in traffic. In the future, the Bureau of Transportation will set up modules that integrate aerial photography drones and AI recognition technologies to increase the government’s traffic diversion capabilities during large events.
The Bureau of Transportation spent two years gradually setting up AI image recognition devices in busy traffic zones. So far, 24 sets of equipment have been set up at 14 major streets downtown which are often congested. The Smart Transportation Center leverages cloud data collection and analytic technologies to compute the degree of congestion at different roads and automatically adjust signal seconds according to the traffic flow. Bureau of Transportation Director-General Wang Ming-Te remarked that the new dynamic signal system can speed up the efficiency of diverting congested traffic and reduce the time required to pass through main roads by 11.7%.