London Hacked Its Own Traffic Lights To Make Sure It Got the Olympics

bmsleight writes "Does it count as a hack if you change your own system? Vanity Fair report that during the bidding process for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the London Streets Traffic Control Center followed each vehicle using CCTV, 'and when they came up to traffic lights,' [bid committee CEO Keith] Mills said, 'we turned them green.'"

Comments

standard operating procedure

[Swampash]

Every Olympic bid since Sydney's bid for the 2000 games has done the same. This isn't anything new.

Using CCTV

[BeerCat]

using CCTV to change traffic lights (apart from showing just how widespread the coverage in London is) is almost minor compared to some of the other bid stunts - they took the motorcade through the (at that time, not yet opened) railway tunnels from St Pancras to Stratford, as if to demonstrate how easy it was to get to the Olympic site - provided you didn't see any of that "get in the way" stuff. Like the city...

Re:Using CCTV

[asdf7890]

The bit that gets me riled is that to even be permitted to bid we had to create legislation protecting the commercial interests of the little jamboree we are funding this year.

Since I learned that I went from keeping my disinterest to myself and just not paying any attention to the proceedings to actively telling people that fact (people tend to either be shocked or simply refuse to believe it) and making sure I know who the sponsors are (aside from us tax payers that it) so when I have a choice between two products I pick the one that isn't involved in the thing.

(Petty, yes, but in the absence of decent victories to speak of I enjoy my petty little stabs.)

Congestion nightmare without hacking it?

[ehiris]

It was really difficult to find which cars they allowed through in Vanity Fair for those who don't feel like reading the rest of the article about the most boring subjects on the planet: olympic sports, and London

"Near the end of the application process, an I.O.C. evaluation committee was permitted to visit London. Bid-committee officials knew that London’s transportation system was a weak spot on the city’s application. “Our nightmare was it would take forever to get to the venues,” Mills recalled. A bid-committee team planned the routes that I.O.C. members would travel around the city, and G.P.S. transmitters were planted in all of the I.O.C. members’ vehicles so they could be tracked. From the London Traffic Control Center, near Victoria Station, where hundreds of monitors display live feeds from London’s comprehensive CCTV surveillance system, each vehicle was followed, from camera to camera, “and when they came up to traffic lights,” Mills said, “we turned them green.”

Re:Congestion nightmare without hacking it?

[BasilBrush]

It's...

D. Traffic for Londoners and visitors will be a nightmare. But olympic athletes, officials and VIPS have designated lanes all over London that will be kept free for them to get around quickly.

Fines for using these lanes without a permit are £200. Even for cyclists - which will be interesting, as London cyclists mostly disregard traffic laws and ordinarily are not dealt with.

Good Grief Charlie Brown

[stomv]

1. Giving IOC Observers the lights didn't "Make Sure" that London got the Olympics. A major overstatement to be sure.
2. While London may have used CCTV, it surely wasn't necessary. A few motorcyclists or taxi drivers with mobile phones and headsets could have just as easily kept tabs on the IOC Observers [so could GPS, though perhaps not as accurately as humans].
3. The idea of prioritizing traffic in a network should not be novel to /.ers. Not only do we do it with packets, we already to it on roads. Vehicles with sirens and lights have first priority, and at least in tUSA we give funeral parades second priority. Third priority goes to buses which have TSP [traffic signal prioritization] systems, thereby holding a light green or turning it green when a bus approaches. Last priority: us regular users. Giving a higher priority to IOC Observers might not be a great use of taxpayer dollars or appropriate for fairness, but that's a local political decision and certainly not a novel application of technology.

But hey, the story involves CCTV, traffic lights, and sports which don't always involve a ball or a puck. Perfect fodder for a silly /. article.

Re:Reminds me of the Italian Job

[History's Coming To]

The first traffic lights in the world were on Downing St. They were gas powered and later exploded, killing a police officer.

It's Hackling

[ze_jua]

One of my favourite definitions of hacking : Using things in a unique way outside their intended purpose is often perceived as having hack value. (It's not me who posted this on WP).

They did is a hack with their CCTV+green-lights.

Re:Good reason not to go there...

[Dogtanian]

It's certainly not ethical, and could be argued as fraud since you're not demonstrating the normal operation of the traffic grid.

Given the amount of special treatment they've given to Olympic transport (e.g. their own special lanes), this was probably quite representative of what they could expect. Frankly, when they found out the car they were being driven around in wasn't made by one of the officially-permitted Olympic sponsors, the guide probably agreed to have it set on fire and a new £250,000 replacement delivered from the nearest appropriate dealership pronto.