The recognition of moving vehicles by electronic means

The increasing congestion of traffic in London´s streets has been a matter of major concern to London Transport for many years, and the maintenance of service regularity in these difficult circumstances has so far been achieved with some degree of success by additional supervision of operating personnel. The paper describes a method whereby, without any additions to the road staff, an increasing amount of information can be given at a central control point as to the movement of buses. This should enable measures to be taken before conditions deteriorate, and thus minimize service irregularities. Details of an equipment which has been developed for this purpose are given, and the component items of the equipment, namely the identification markings on each bus, the roadside scanning and sending units and the central receiving and presentation cabinet, are described. A later Section of the paper forecasts improvements and developments which are visualized for the future, and although this equipment has been designed to deal with a specific bus operating problem, it should have numerous applications wherever a number of moving objects need to be recorded.