A traffic camera is a video camera that looks at vehicular traffic on a highway. They are usually placed along major highways, such as highways, highways, highways, highways and highways, as well as arteries, and are connected with buried optical fibers to the side or even under the road, with electrical power supplied either By the utility grid OR by solar panels or other alternative energy source that provides consistent images without the threat of power failure during inclement conditions. A monitoring center receives the live video in real time, and serves as a dispatcher if there is a traffic crash or some other incident or road safety incident.
Traffic cameras are an important part of most intelligent transportation systems. They are especially valuable in tunnels, where security equipment can be remotely activated based on information provided by cameras and other sensors. On surface roads, they are typically mounted on tall poles or masts, sometimes along with street lights. On arterial roads, they are often mounted on traffic lights at intersections where problems are more likely to occur. In remote areas, with no easy access to the main power grid, they are usually fed by other means, such as solar power, which also provides a source of support for the urban camera infrastructure.
Traffic cameras are distinct from road safety cameras, which are placed in specific places to enforce road rules. These cameras take still pictures at a much higher resolution when shooting, while traffic cameras are simply for observation and constantly take low resolution video, often in full motion, although they are controllable remotely to focus on an incident of Traffic running farther along a path that may not be in the usual field of view of the camera. Many broadcast in legacy analog NTSC and PAL formats, depending on the location. Some have a compass built in which shows the cardinal direction in which the camera is headed, although many providers also provide a reference picture of a shot with the cardinal direction.
Many transportation departments have linked their Internet camera networks to online websites, making it the webcams that allow travelers to view current traffic conditions. They can display streaming video or still images that are refreshed in an interval of seconds or minutes, helping travelers to determine if they should take an alternate route. In the United States and Canada, these are often displayed on the 5-1-1 state or municipal websites (511 being a telephone number designed to relay current traffic information). These traffic images are also combined with road sensors that measure traffic time to provide a complete picture of traffic conditions.
Many states and provinces consider this information to be in the public domain, so many television stations broadcast live camera pictures during their own traffic reports on their local news broadcasts. Some cable TV systems provide these full-time images on a government-issued channel, and some television stations set aside a full digital sub channel only for traffic information and camera images, such as the Philadelphia WPHL-DT4 at Past and WMVT-DT6 in Milwaukee today. . However, in some cases for toll roads and other private highway authorities, such as the Illinois State Highway Authority, these images are owned by the tolling agency (or private company operating a toll road) and the Pictures are celebrated under an exclusivity agreement for a station (in the case of ISTHA, which only air on WMAQ-TV).