Situated on intersection lights across the city are hundreds of cameras that track in real time the traffic patterns, but what Calgarians might not know about is the drones in the sky, and the VR in the control centre putting all of that data to use.
Calgary has been leading the way on using low-cost, off-the-shelf technologies, along with in-house developed artificial intelligence, to make roads a little easier to navigate.
That has made the third-largest city in Canada 11th in congestion, below other cities like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, but also cities like Edmonton and Winnipeg, according to a 2024 study by navigation firm TomTom.
That greater efficiency for drivers has also meant savings in their pocketbooks, with technological solutions taking the place of congestion surcharges or pricing that has been implemented as an economic solution to traffic woes in other cities.
“If you can actually reduce or eliminate congestion by using better signalization and by using technology that allows for movements to be much better, it’s much more efficient than having to charge people for the concept of congestion,” said Mayor Jyoti Gondek.
“Anything we can do that helps people get around better, easier, and save time in their day, we’re absolutely going to deploy every type of technology to make that happen.”
Ravi Seera, Acting Director of Mobility for the City of Calgary, said that those off-the-shelf technologies like DJI drones under 250 grams in weight, and Meta VR headsets give city staff the ability to integrate new ways of addressing traffic cost-effectively.
“We have drones that we are using for traffic management. We are one of the first cities in Canada to do so, and it’s used to monitor traffic during peak hours, but also help us manage major events like events at the Saddledome, so that we can better coordinate traffic flow,” Seera.
“It also gives us a better understanding of how crowd patterns are emerging, and if we can dispatch CPS or offices to control traffic better. It’s been really effective. It’s very cost-effective.”
Making sure the investment made provides a return for taxpayers
He said that the intention behind every pilot program is to ensure that there is value behind the investment.
One of the examples of how those low-cost pilots are being transformed is through the use of virtual reality headsets to allow traffic staff to view and adjust light timing in real time as if they were actually standing in the middle of an intersection.
“The initial cost was around $10,000 to bring them online, and now it’s all the cost of adding more VR headsets. Meta has just launched a new headset, so any of those headsets that are used at home to play games can be used,” said Seera.
“We are looking at expanding to 10 to 15 intersections next year, primarily around high pedestrian areas as well as around even centres and downtown primarily.”
The City of Calgary has also entered into a first-of-its-kind data sharing agreement with Google Maps and Waze (also owned by Google), which allows for city road data, such as street closures and street view images, to be uploaded directly.
This has cut the average time for some types of map data being available to the public from three years, down to six months.
For Waze, the data deal also means that information provided by users about the conditions on Calgary streets can be shared directly with the city’s Traffic Operations Centre.
“There is a lot of research done into people’s behaviour when it comes to travel patterns and the way they make decisions about how they’re going to travel, and we learned that people are quite reliant on apps,” said Mayor Gondek.
City’s traffic cameras not being used like Big Brother
One of the things that Seera stressed, was that the city’s camera system was not being used to record the movement of individuals throughout the city.
In fact, none of the cameras actually record video at all—they simply provide a real-time feed to the control centre for staff to monitor, much to the chagrin of insurance companies looking for video of car crashes.
“They are helping us to make better decisions. Because traffic changes hour by hour, it gives us our techs and technicians and engineers more information, real-time information to make decisions in a real-time manner,” said Seera.
The use of advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence, is similarly guided by strong ethics and privacy policies.
In return for being able to use AI, the City of Calgary has been able to reduce the need to hire traffic consultants to do traffic studies, instead using the already existing camera system to count vehicles and pedestrians.
AI is also able to adapt traffic signals to changing travel patterns in real time.
“We have detection cameras that determine how much traffic flow is on the corridor, and it just signals accordingly. We have adapted to traffic signal timing on some key corridors that will help traffic that’s been waiting the longest or the heaviest volume routes are helped,” said Seera.
Examples of those routes include Macleod Trail and Crowchild Trail, he said.
Mayor Gondek said the use of technology was making traffic safer and less congested for Calgarians.
“I’m really hopeful and optimistic that we can alleviate some of the pressure on traffic, and maybe calm drivers down to some degree, so that we’re not experiencing the amount of collisions that we have seen in the past. In particular, the collisions between vehicles and pedestrians, where lives are lost.”
