Iowa DOT Cameras Show Traffic Patterns
Quote:
CORALVILLE - The Department of Transportation is about to tear up your traveling world. A five year plan to widen Interstate-80 to six lanes starts this summer. And while two lanes of traffic will be open in each direction at all times, the work will still cause delays.
Iowa DOT Special Projects Engineer Mike Jackson said, “Especially during the peak traffic times there will probably be some congestion."
The DOT wants to make this project easy on Iowans. So it installed 14 cameras on I-80, I-380 and Highway 218. The cameras feed video to the Internet. In a few months you can log onto www.511ia.org and see how bad traffic is.
Jackson said, “We're trying to provide additional services that will get better traffic information to the public."
The cameras are expected to help emergency services, too. If dispatch can see exactly where an accident is, it will get the right people to the scene faster.
Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said, “It's not uncommon for responders especially with the ditches to look around a little bit and go in opposite directions if they don't know exact location."
And saving time can lead to saving lives.
The cameras are up and running, but you will not be able to check out the traffic patterns until at least July. It could be as long as November.
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This is my stomping grounds, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I care that there are cameras on me. Will I check the website to see if there are traffic delays? Eh, probably not. Murphy's law says that if I'm so busy at work that I'm going to be late to pick up my daughter, then there
will be some dumbass who gonna make me even later. But, for anyone else out there traveling, beware!! It's gonna be slow going for another 1/2 decade, so do yourself (and me) a favor and reroute yourself. Thanks in advance.
I highly doubt that the cameras will increase response time to an accident, since pretty much everyone has a cellphone in their car, and every time I have called to report what appeared to be a freash accident, the 911 operators already knew about it. I think that part of the report is just trying to make people feel better about being 'watched'.
What would be nice is to have them as proof in case of an accident as to exactly what happened, and who was responsible. But of course, I doubt the tapes would be admissable or available if you really needed them.
My opinion? They can't hurt, but I'm not sure how much they'll help.