The Nelson Mandela Metropol took innovative action to make the beaches of Port Elizabeth even more attractive to visitors by using an Adroit supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) to inform beach-goers of available parking.
This involved the erection of three electronic variable message sign boards, constructed of high grade stainless steel and incorporating high visibility amber light emitting diodes (LED) at various points along the beachfront.
Each of the boards was strategically placed to inform motorists in good time in order that traffic decisions could be made without the usual congestion associated with beachfront traffic. The boards convey information with regard to the number of parking spaces available in that specific beach's parking area.
The beachfront road is mostly a dual carriageway, but does become congested by cars waiting to enter parking areas from the main beachfront road. The problem is especially compounded over the summer holiday season when beachfront traffic increases substantially.
Peter Douglas, traffic engineering officer of the Nelson Mandela Metropol, says: "Traffic congestion on the beachfront road not only causes inconvenience for the beach and road users, but also makes it impossible for emergency and maintenance vehicles to operate effectively. The installation of the new system at Kings, Humewood and Hobie beaches has significantly alleviated this common beachfront problem." The Adroit scada system is fed information via inductive loops that were cut into the roads and connected to the PLCs which were either in the signboards or located at the power source. The signals from the PLCs are transferred to the dedicated Adroit server in the traffic control office via a 802.11 radio frequency transmitter The software drivers for the radio frequency PLCs were not originally available, they were produced in record time by Adroit Technologies for the system integrators from I2T. The system runs on Windows XP, using 150 tags and four PLCs.
Adroit Technologies believes that its local presence and commitment to the South African market make it imperative that it assists its business partners in the delivery of their projects on time. The information generated by the system is made available to the Traffic Engineering office in spreadsheet format for analysis and decision making. The versatility of the Adroit scada system caters for future plans to extend the system to increase the information supplied to include weather, sea temperature and wind speed. The picture shows a typical parking guidance and management system topology.
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