I received this press release down below by e-mail from Sena Traffic Systems's public relations consultant on 23 May 2019 and it made me wonder:-
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| Slow traffic - courtesy The Malaysian Times |
Sena Traffic Systems certainly has an impressive range of hardware and software traffic management equipment, systems and intelligent traffic management solutions on its website, as well as an impressive list of clients, especially the JKR (Public Works Department) and several local authorities, including the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ), Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) and several other municipalities in Malaysia.
CLICK FOR: Sena Traffic Systems
However, will Sena Traffic Systems be able to effectively obtain the cooperation of federal and local authorities to bring all traffic lights, at least on major roads in cities and towns across Malaysia under control of their gee-whiz system?
After all, Sena Traffic Systems says that their intelligent traffic management system “has the potential to reduce travel time (on our roads) by 12%”. So it's pretty obvious that their intelligent traffic management system will only have a limited effect on reducing travel time.
Heck! When our state assemblyman and local councillor find it hard enough to get local council staff to act on us residents’ complaints about clogged drains, potholes and other problems on the ground, what locus standi will Sena Traffic Systems have to get local council staff or staff of relevant federal and state authorities to act on problems on the ground?
Can this gee-whiz system solve traffic problems due to chronic physical factors of the road system, such as roads which are too narrow, have too many ramps bringing traffic into and out of a road or highway, creating choke points and bottlenecks in traffic flow?
Can their gee-whiz system magically widen roads, move choke points farther away from the roads to allow for smoother traffic flow on roads?
I know that's a silly question, since such physical renovations to physical road infrastructure require the approval and physical intervention by local authorities' physical contractors who will use physical equipment and actual humans to do the job, and that's provided these authorities act on traffic data and information provided by intelligent systems such as provided by Sena.
Just yesterday, I was caught in slow traffic on the Federal Highway between the intersection with Jalan Barat and exit ramp leading to ICON City, which is shortly before the exit ramp leading up to the LDP, where there has regularly been traffic congestion on the Federal Highway before it. This was around 2.30pm on 15 July 2019.
Can their gee-whiz system magically widen roads, move choke points farther away from the roads to allow for smoother traffic flow on roads?
I know that's a silly question, since such physical renovations to physical road infrastructure require the approval and physical intervention by local authorities' physical contractors who will use physical equipment and actual humans to do the job, and that's provided these authorities act on traffic data and information provided by intelligent systems such as provided by Sena.
Just yesterday, I was caught in slow traffic on the Federal Highway between the intersection with Jalan Barat and exit ramp leading to ICON City, which is shortly before the exit ramp leading up to the LDP, where there has regularly been traffic congestion on the Federal Highway before it. This was around 2.30pm on 15 July 2019.
Traffic flowed smoothly along the Federal Highway after these two exit ramps.
DBKL launched its ITIS (Integrated Traffic Information System) in 2005. It provides us with information about areas where there is traffic congestion along major roads in the Klang Valley but the Federal Highway remains jammed like hell at peak periods 14 years later, such as where traffic from and to the Pencala Link joins the Federal Highway near Kg. Kerinchi, where traffic from and to the LDP joins the Federal Highway near the former Motorola, where traffic on the Federal Highway exits towards the Seremban Highway and Cheras, traffic jams in Subang Jaya at peak periods.
How soon will the police or highway troubleshooting response teams attend to temporary factors causing traffic congestion, such as stalled cars, vehicles involved in accidents, fallen trees and so forth?
The way I see it, at most this system will be able to intelligently and flexibly synchronise the timing of traffic lights based upon traffic congestion it senses at any given time of the day, so motorists won’t encounter situations where the light is green in their favour at the junction they are stopped at but they cannot move because the traffic light at the next junction is red and the cars are backed up all the way to their junction, such as happens on Jalan 17/21, heading towards Jalan Damansara/Sprint Highway during peak periods.
This also happens on Jalan 14/29, Section 14, Petaling Jaya, where the traffic light at the junction with Jalan 20/7, just before Dataran 3-Two turns green, when the traffic light at the junction with Jalan 19/1 just after Dataran 3-Two turns red, so cars on Jalan 14/29 which get through the green traffic light at the junction with Jalan 20/7 must stop at the red traffic light at the junction with Jalan 19/1, roughly 100 metres away.
This also happens on Jalan 14/29, Section 14, Petaling Jaya, where the traffic light at the junction with Jalan 20/7, just before Dataran 3-Two turns green, when the traffic light at the junction with Jalan 19/1 just after Dataran 3-Two turns red, so cars on Jalan 14/29 which get through the green traffic light at the junction with Jalan 20/7 must stop at the red traffic light at the junction with Jalan 19/1, roughly 100 metres away.
Back in the latter part of the 1960s, I read about plans to implement a “green wave” traffic light system along what was called Foch Avenue (now Jalan Tun H.S. Lee) in Kuala Lumpur. This system was supposed to ensure that the lights were sychronised such that they would be green at every junction at more or less the same time to enable continuous flow of traffic through several junctions before they turned red.
I don’t know whether it was actually implemented and even if it was for a time at least, I did not see any appreciable different in traffic flow along Foch Avenue/Jalan Tun H.S. Lee.
I also rarely drive my car into Singapore but in 1994 I did when I visited by relations there and whilst driving along Upper Thomson Road, I noticed that the lights at several successive junctions along my journey were green before the next one turned red.
That looked to me like they a working “green wave” system in operation there and that was back in 1994 when the vast majority of us did not have access to slow dialup Internet, we still sent letters and postcards to each other by snail mail, client/server computing was the buzzword in IT circles at the time, TV was still free-to-air, mobile phones were mostly first-generation (1G) and analogue and about the size of a DECT cordless handset today, and were only good for making and receiving voice calls, though at the time, Singapore TV news reported the launch of second generation (2G) GSM digital service and phones, which besides voice, also included text messaging.
Well, “green wave” traffic light management and control was already in operation back in those “stone age” days of IT, though yes, their timing perhaps was not intelligently adaptive to traffic conditions at any given time.
Anyway, Sena has such a customised system, called a Tidal Flow System operating along Jalan Loke Yew in Kuala Lumpur today.
CLICK FOR: Sena Tidal Flow System
I rarely drive into Kuala Lumpur these days, as I prefer to take the LRT, Monorail or MRT, so I don't know what traffic along Jalan Loke Yew is like, especially at peak hours, so I don't know how effective Sena's Tidal Flow System is.
Anyway, Sena has such a customised system, called a Tidal Flow System operating along Jalan Loke Yew in Kuala Lumpur today.
CLICK FOR: Sena Tidal Flow System
I rarely drive into Kuala Lumpur these days, as I prefer to take the LRT, Monorail or MRT, so I don't know what traffic along Jalan Loke Yew is like, especially at peak hours, so I don't know how effective Sena's Tidal Flow System is.
Anyway, besides what Sena Traffic Systems’ Alibaba Cloud-based intelligent traffic management system can do, unless the relevant federal and local authorities act promptly on the ground to address the chronic causes of traffic problems, I don’t see how this gee whiz system will solve real-world traffic problems on the ground in the long term.
You may want to check out two of my IT.Scheiss blog posts on this issue in 2017 and in February 2018 respectively.
“Can you believe that this gee whiz IT-based traffic management solution will solve our problem of traffic jams?”
Press release follows below.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Alibaba Cloud and Sena Traffic Systems to Build a Smart Traffic Solution
The Smart Traffic Solution will develop a cloud-empowered smart solution that improves traffic environments
Kuala Lumpur, May 23, 2019 – Alibaba Cloud, the data intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, announced today a collaboration with Sena Traffic Systems (Sena), Malaysia’s leading smart traffic system controller, to build a smart traffic management system in Malaysia. Utilizing cloud empowered smart technologies, the system will digitally transform the traffic management infrastructure in the city and has the potential to reduce travel time by 12%.
The collaboration was announced during its launch today in the presence of by YBrs. Encik Tan Chuan Ou, Deputy Secretary-General (Operations) of the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia (KKMM) accompanied by Selina Yuan, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International; Kenny Tan, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Malaysia; and Dato’ Tan Boon Hock, Managing Director of Sena Traffic Systems. Surina Shukri, Chief Executive Officer of MDEC and Dato' Ng Wan Peng, Chief Operation Officer of MDEC were also amongst the special guests present at the event.
Alibaba Cloud will provide its City Brain solution, cloud computing resources and talent development programs through the collaboration. Sena will be responsible for the design and development of traffic light systems, and implementation of its patented algorithm for the city traffic light system.
Selina Yuan, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International said, “The smart traffic solution will constantly learn and adapt to changing traffic environments, making the traffic management system a smart learning platform and no longer just an analytic tool.”
“The smart traffic solution and technology have the potential to improve traffic situation not just in Malaysia, but also in the ASEAN region. We will continue to empower all Malaysian stakeholders, in both the public and private sectors, with cloud-empowered technology to enhance efficiency, advance innovation and succeed in the digital age. Through this collaboration, Alibaba Cloud and Sena will also share the best practice with other regional partners,” Yuan added.
The demonstration at the event also showcased the capabilities that are essential for traffic management, including incident detection, congestion detection, vehicle counting, vehicle classification, traffic light optimization and traffic simulation.
"Sena built the Malaysia’s first smart traffic lights system and operated our smart traffic R&D lab.
With our collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, Sena will have an even better and more complete solution to solve traffic congestion in urban landscapes. We are eager to move rapidly beyond our current development plans for smart traffic and are already looking at exploring developments in several intelligent digital platforms for urban management systems such as street furniture controllers, IoT and smart city enterprise management together with Alibaba Cloud,” said Dato’ Tan Boon Hock, Managing Director of Sena Traffic Systems.
The collaboration represents the latest initiative by Alibaba Cloud to continue to empower the local technology partners in Malaysia. Alibaba Cloud setup its first local data centre in Malaysia in 2017 to provide enterprises and SMEs a local choice to build their businesses and run their applications on powerful, reliable and secure cloud platform. To further support Malaysian enterprises, Alibaba Cloud setup its second local data centre and its first cloud based Anti-DDoS Scrubbing Center in Malaysia last year to offer customers the highest level of protection against DDoS attacks and further enhances the infrastructure needed to support Malaysia’s digital economy.
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At the end of the day, IT is just and enabler, so before IT-based systems can solve particular problems, the relevant human-related problems must be solved first.
Otherwise, however many IT-based solutions are thrown at a problem, there will be no significant resolution long term.
Yours trully
IT.Scheiss
http://itsheiss.blogspot.com/
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