August 22, 2008
Metro St. Louis Procures Onboard Surveillance Cams
By Raju Shanbhag
TMCnet Contributing Editor
Looking to install onboard surveillance camera systems on 50 new Call-A-Ride paratransit vans, the Metro transit agency in St. Louis, Missouri has awarded an approximately $250,000 sole-source contract to Safety Vision, a provider of mobile digital video solutions. Eligible riders in the St. Louis area will now get curb-to-curb public transportation from the agency’s Call-A-Ride program.
The new contract was approved by the agency in June 2008 and was partially funded by a Department of Homeland Security Grant. Installation is scheduled to occur in two shifts: the first 25 vehicles this month, the second 25 in October. For 11 years, Safety Vision, a 16-year veteran of the mobile surveillance industry, has supported Metro’s transit security efforts.
Each new Call-A-Ride vehicle will be outfitted with four mobile-rated security cameras, including microphones, impact sensors, and the Safety Vision RoadRecorder 6000 PRO mobile digital video recorder (MDVR). Apart from recording video, audio, and system health data in a secure, encrypted MPEG4 format, the MDVR also supports up to 10 interior and exterior cameras. The PRO features more camera frames per second, tripled storage capacity, wireless connectivity, and streamlined data management and builds on earlier generations in the RoadRecorder series.
The Safety Vision onboard camera systems are also being used by transit authorities in other major metropolitan areas including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Illinois, and Portland, Oregon to increase operator safety, enhance public security, mitigate transit authorities’ risk, and strengthen criminal prosecutors’ cases.
Safety Vision Account Executive John Major says, “We’ve installed camera systems on hundreds of Metro’s transit buses and light-rail vehicles. As we move into the paratransit vans, we’re extending our mobile safety net to encompass all of Metro’s ridership, driver/operators, and rolling assets. This project is also of note as one of our largest installations of security cameras in a paratransit fleet.”
He continued, “Along with Broward County Transit in Florida, St. Louis Metro is one of our oldest transit customers. We’ve shared their longstanding commitment to improving the safety and security of their personnel and the public, and we’ve learned together over the years. The Safety Vision team takes pains to ask the right questions of these and other transit customers, and to listen carefully to their answers. Our in-house engineering staff then designs solutions according to customer input, yielding the most technologically advanced yet user friendly systems available today and into the future.”
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Eve Sullivan
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