Blackpool Council’s moto is ‘Progress’, and technology supplier Smart Video and Sensing says the town is living up to that by installing its first smartmicro TRUGRD STREAM combined radar-CCTV solution.

The device has been place at the junction of Queens Square and the A584 Promenade for traffic management and data collection purposes.

The installation, at one of the oldest and busiest parts of Blackpool, will monitor traffic along the promenade and the junction with Talbot Square collecting data on traffic movements, classification, pedestrian counts and tram movements.

The TRUGRD STREAM installation is the first of a number of such sites panned for Blackpool, and SVS says it compliments the ITS infrastructure it worked with SWARCO to install three years ago.

“The Blackpool moto of ‘Progress’ is really living up to its meaning,” said SVS owner Peter Eccleson. “Blackpool town’s £40m regeneration programme and post-Covid recovery plans are pretty spectacular. The addition of our TRUGRD STREAM and NOVUS data aggregator to supplement our already active journey time system will assist the traffic managers with planning as well as the traffic management supporting many of the events that take place in Blackpool throughout the year such as the world famous illuminations.”

SVS says the TRUGRD radar is an ultra high definition radar that can separate objects even in areas where vehicles are closely spaced which makes it ideal for tunnels. The forward firing radar measures parameters in a 4D – range, speed, azimuth and elevation angle. It can cover up to 12 traffic lanes in any direction at a range of up to 300m (984ft) and can detect 256 simultaneous objects or ‘targets’.

The company says that the device offers “easy to use programmability”, with every vehicle reported as a per vehicle record (PVR) and the radar can report speed, classification, count, gap, headway, wrong way vehicle and stopped vehicle.

(Picture – SVS)