FireAnts provides you with information regarding traffic flow information on streets in Jakarta. The idea is that if you know where the traffic jams are, you will be able to avoid them.  And how do we get the information ?  Well, the information is gathered from real cars on the roads.  These cars act like moving sensors and report traffic condtion to us.  We then process this information and make it readable by people like ourselves who need the information.

Well, you know the saying, A picture is worth a thousand words (or in this case a video).  We had to prepare a video for the Mobile Monday Peer Awards 2009 that we are entering (A contest for mobile applications which will be judged by the audience, and not by formal judges). Since we’ve already made it, I thought I’d share it here as well with all of you.

Let me know what you think.. (Some of you may have already seen it, since it was posted on facebook as well a while back..)

Please join http://bebasmacet.ning.com to help each other out in coping with the traffic in Jakarta as well as to learn more about our FireAnts solution.

Apparently traffic jams can be created out of thin air, and I presume this is what happen most of the time:  Check out this video I found on YouTube.

I suppose the only solution is to have all the cars controlled centrally… don’t let humans drive it…

Would you believe it ? Jakarta has its own Traffic Management Center and it’s not half bad either.

Located within the compound of Polda Metro jaya, the TMC is the center for all traffic tracking and information for the city of Jakarta. It is also where they man the 1717 sms for traffic reporting and information.

The inside of the TMC reminds me somewhat of the houston command center where they control the launch of the space shuttles..:) There is one giant screen in the middle with about 4-6 other smaller screens on its sides.
Information from the different stations can be quickly pulled up to all of the screens, including the giant one, upon request, much like in the scenes of Star Trek, when Captain Kirk or Picard says “On Screen”.

There are about 6 different stations if I’m not mistaken, in the middle of the room, each with about 3 screens, and manned by police officers. The different stations have different purposes, including: sms monitoring, web monitoring, Police GPS locations, Traffic conditions.

Just behind the stations is a section which looks somewhat like a small auditorium. I believe this is where reporters or visitors can come and watch what is going on.

There are tons of information being recorded: traffic cameras, traffic conditions reported on different roads, accident reports, demonstration reports, police locations, traffic light conditions across the city, etc., etc. There is definitely no shortage of data.
They currently have about 38 traffic cameras all over the city. Some are looking over highways and some are pointed at major roads.
The cool thing is the cameras can be zoomed and panned remotely. Wow! Zoom in on that speeding car’s license plate ! (Zooming in to that level may not be possible in reality, though)

With all this information, the TMC can quickly know if there is a traffic condition that needs to be attended to, and can dispatch the closest police officer to the scene (If he/she is not in traffic herself, ofcourse).

A youtube video, which gives a glimpse of what the police officers are monitoring daily inside the TMC can be found in the videos section of the bebasmacet.ning.com site.

Are you aware of the existence of TMC in Jakarta ?

On several occasions, my driver has asked other drivers about how long on average their travel times are to and from the office. On average for people going into the sudirman area it takes about 2 hours one way. If they start going at 9 o’clock i n the morning, they’ll arrive at the office at 11. With that long of a travel time, they could already be in Bandung.

If say you consider that you spend 2 hours going into the city and about 1.5 hours going back, that’s 3.5 hours per day. Say you work 5 days a week, in one month you’d already be spending 17.5 hours in traffic. In a year you’d end up wasting around 210 hours. That’s roughly equal to 26 days of work days, or about one month worth of work time.

Imagine that ! Out of the 12 months that you go to work, you actually spend one month sitting in traffic. Can you think of other more useful ways of spending one month worth of your time ?