Once again, GoodVision is improving traffic management in Southern Europe. This time our solution contributed to M.K.Traffic Technical Solutions Ltd, a company from Cyprus specialising in the field of Traffic Engineering and Safety with its main area of work being the supply and installation of traffic control equipment. They are true experts in the field, operating since decades - in fact the business was started a generation ago. That did not seem to be an issue in terms of recognising the added value of automated traffic data collection, which our solution offers. Commercial Director and Quantity Surveyor at MKTTS, Mr Andreas Kakoullis, revealed to us that it was his father who discovered GoodVision mainly thanks to his past references.
The company is specialised in services for traffic surveys, installation of traffic counters, bluetooth devices, basically everything connected to traffic monitoring, with a special focus on sustainable mobility. In regards to traffic management, they are expanding their services in the parking sector, being particularly interested in bringing smart parking to Cyprus: parking monitoring and management for both private and public sector, assigning the hourly rate according to demand.
What made Andreas and his team opt for a solution such as GoodVision Video Insights was the current project involving several aspects of collecting traffic data. In the past they were used to count traffic manually. But performing traffic surveys for 2 hours in the morning and another 2 hours in the afternoon for a whole month was impossible with the old methods. In fact there were 60 junctions to analyse in a month, so manual counting was out of question. Therefore they eagerly embraced the idea of adopting a software for counting vehicles automatically. The main parameters they were looking for were the traffic volume, object class classification (car, bus, truck, van, bike and motorcycle) as well as travel time.
The method they used was quite interesting: the recordings on junctions were done with the use of smart phones attached to 6m long sticks. The crew could dedicate their time to other more important tasks in the meantime. The videos retrieved were then simply uploaded and while they were being processed, once more the team had extra time available. GoodVision was clearly bringing them excellent time optimisation. The biggest challenge they had during the traffic survey was not being able to adjust the smartphone cameras in order to have the right angle, but with our solution they managed to get the desired results regardless.
The project is still running and is expected to be finalised by the end of 2022. The aim of the contractor is understanding the peak hour in order to better estimate traffic flow coming to the city. Evaluating the busiest junctions is going to facilitate them to recreate the public transport system, designing proper bus lanes for the future.
As mentioned before, the owner of MKTTS did not have any doubt to try a software for their traffic project. Their absolute trust approach was also due to technology being developed exponentially in the company during the last years. The next project where they wish to use GoodVision is going to involve our ANPR reports, including vehicle lists with the information about licence plates of the vehicles crossing a selected filter.
‘’We are extremely happy with GoodVision and its services. You helped us meet the requirements of the project, which we would never be able to achieve with manual counting’’
(A.Kakoullis - Commercial Director and Quantity Surveyor at MKTTS)
Apart from recognising a major benefit in the extra time gained, and thus enabling the staff to focus on other tasks, an unexpected outcome was GoodVision’s customer support. They were pleasantly surprised by our team, checking from the very first moment if everything was going smoothly while surfing our platform and discovering its functionalities. On top of that, regularly getting proactive suggestions for improving the results and increasing accuracy was seen as rare to find and extremely valuable approach.
Andreas confirmed that they will gladly consider GoodVision in the future. It was the first time they used our software and after this experience, they are looking forward to the next partnership whenever the opportunity arises.