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Got Drapes? Caltans is Watching
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4074 Reads
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 We come and go through rush hour in our little steel cages, carelessly unaware that we are being watched. VERY CLOSELY.
A nifty post at BLDGBLOG reminds us that Caltrans and LADOT have massive networks of sensors, cameras and electronic doodads trained on our every lane change and Hollywood stop. Photos in the post show the video screens, traffic maps and pavement sensors that let the most intricate traffic control system on earth manage the chaos ...
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Its surfaces carefully painted and inlaid with sensors, its intersections programmed from afar, the Los Angeles road network is not unlike an immersive, 24-hour experimental film set. It is a counter-Hollywood, constantly filmed – a paparazzi for empty concrete – and its main actors are the surfaces of roads. All of this is overseen by a rotating staff of technicians who sip coffee and watch for "incidents" in secure, air-conditioned control rooms.
These rooms are where new scenes in the great and secret show of Los Angeles are recorded everyday. I got to tour the Caltrans center once, back when I was trying to get permission to put live traffic cam feeds onto the late, lamented LAInsider.com.
It's a sensual shock - a room throbbing with the glow of dozens of monitors, computer readouts and projection screens, all counting, measuring, assessing and reporting the millions of car trips Los Angeles takes, every hour of every day.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't give us permission to use anything more than their four "public" cameras, which are fixed on:
There are at least 450 more cameras, many of them high-resolution tilt-pan-zoom rigs that can snap-focus on traffic wrecks, lane blockages and other trouble, then pipe the feed to the CHP dispatcher in the next room.
Why couldn't we get access? For one thing, Caltrans has a history of denying subpoenas from ambulance-chasing lawyers trying to get video of their clients' wrecks. Putting the feeds on a web site would have blown a hole in that wall.
But more importantly, they said, the cameras might be trained on the shoulder and the buildings beyond and Caltrans didn't want the liability of having us publish video of someone's bedroom or bathroom window.
Live by the freeway? Got drapes?
(Spotted at blogging.la)
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| Posted by: Mack_Reed on Thursday, October 27, 2005 - 10:18 AM
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