Movements of Pedestrians and Vehicles in Inner-city Liverpool To Be Captured by Cameras and Smartphones To Help Local Council Map Potential Tweaks To Streets (smh.com.au)

Jacob Saulwick, reporting for The Sydney Morning Herald: The movement of pedestrians and vehicles in inner-city Liverpool will be captured by upgraded CCTV cameras and smartphones. The project, part-funded by the federal government's $50 million "Smart Cities" program, aims to help the local council map potential tweaks to streets and planning rules, in an area undergoing rapid development. "It gives us the opportunity to be more experimental in our CBD to get better outcomes for the people using it," the chief executive of Liverpool City Council, Kiersten Fishburn, said. The street grid of downtown Liverpool was laid out in 1827 by Robert Hoddle, who would go on to survey and plot Melbourne's distinctive grid. And Liverpool is changing fast, with a proposed local environment plan to allow denser and residential development around the inner city, as well as the opening of University of Wollongong and Western Sydney University campuses.

Comments

There's more tha one Liverpool

[Anonymous Coward]

Originally thought it was the UK one, and got very confused until I saw the domain name and realised it was in AUS!

Captcha: specific

Re:There's more tha one Liverpool

[Anonymous Coward]

Even more confusing because of the phrase "inner-city Liverpool". Since Liverpool, New South Wales is a small suburb of about 30,000 people, it doesn't really have any "city", inner or outer. (The more familiar Liverpool in the UK has about half a million people.)

"CBD", by the way, is a common Australian abbreviation for "central business district"; "downtown" for Americans.

Re:There's more tha one Liverpool

[yobjob]

What threw me is they said "inner city". Liverpool in Sydney is out in the sticks! If that qualifies as inner city then may aswell proclaim Canberra as an outer suburb.

Re:There's more tha one Liverpool

[Anonymous Coward]

"CBD", by the way, is a common Australian abbreviation for "central business district"; "downtown" for Americans.

Oh not Cannabidiol... that makes way more sense now!

Re:There's more tha one Liverpool

[Green Mountain Bot]

My first reaction was, "Downtown Liverpool has a grid? And it wasn't laid out until 1827?" That it is Australia and not England clears both questions right up.

Right, for planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, it is for planning purposes. Because you need hi-res cameras that track individual's movement for that. It isn't even a very good lie. Step up your game...

Re:Right, for planning

[b0s0z0ku]

Who said anything about hi-res cameras? The cameras literally need only as good of a resolution as to count moving objects (people/vehicles). They did that for a while in NYC -- a contractor literally zip-tied cheap camera hardware to traffic light posts. Tiny lenses and they removed them after a week or so.

Re:Right, for planning

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Force excess numbers of unvetted immigrants on first world countries.
2. Rape, pillage and plunder ensues.
3. Introduce surveillance and other nasties because of the children.

Classic problem-reaction-solution.

Good. Now fine the jaywalkers

[Anonymous Coward]

And cyclists that disobey rules.

Re:Good. Now fine the jaywalkers

[b0s0z0ku]

Nah, just put a AU$50/day congestion charge in the CBD or increase parking fees, so the amount of drivers is reduced enough so people can safely walk and cycle :)

Re: Good. Now fine the jaywalkers

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to be skinned alive.

corepirate nazis always look before & after us

[Anonymous Coward]

we citizens pay them to provide us with endless 'assistance'? cease fire stand down.. there are moms & babys in every town..where would we be without our crown royals? they gave us blockbuster hits like.. https://archive.org/details/reefer_madness1938 .. peace out in the garden...

can we get a 2nd opinion? 3rds?

[Anonymous Coward]

whois watching the 'watchers'?.. in the moms we trust.. that's the spirit..

Don’t worry

[93 Escort Wagon]

They promise the cameras won’t be used for anything else.

Big Brother is watching you

[swell]

No need for cameras. The same information should already be available from smartphone apps that are observing traffic patterns 24/7. This seems like another excuse to invade citizen privacy; to acquire specific information about each individual driver and pedestrian. Beijing leads the way in this intrusive technology.

My city police have mobile license plate cameras that record every license plate, whether parked or moving, as they patrol the streets. They've been doing that for a couple years now and they share that data with other organizations freely; there is no law to prevent sharing. We don't have quite so many cameras stationed on buildings and intersections as some other cities, but we're getting there...

Re:Big Brother is watching you

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, traffic surveys run by councils have been a thing in almost every country since roads started having more than 5 cars a day on them.

I'm not sure there's really much difference between CCTV keeping count of traffic on a street, and a guy in a high vis vest with a clipboard on a fold out chair.

This doesn't strike me as a particular deterioration of privacy over the status quo - it's just job automation and nothing more.

Re:Big Brother is watching you

[b0s0z0ku]

Exactly. They used to use pneumatic axle counters -- every time a hose was compressed by a vehicle axle passing over, a mechanical counter would increment by 1.

Re:Big Brother is watching you

[coofercat]

Except that now they're uniquely identifying each vehicle and person, and clearly a number plate can be used to identify the driver(s) of the vehicles.

Where before they knew a car drove past, and then returned half an hour later. Now they know that you left work, drove to Love Lane, parked up on the left, walked a few doors up, went into number 57 for 25 minutes, came out and then drove to the registered address for your vehicle.

I think I preferred the old way of doing it, but if you prefer your every move logged and analysed then you knock yourself out - just make sure to post it all on Facebook too. Oh!? You don't post your indiscretions on Facebook? Why not?

And When A Stray Cat Runs Across The CCTV

[dryriver]

The AI monitoring everything gets confused and recommends building more sidewalks on the rooftops of that section of the city...

Intelligence dyad

[fractional_other]

Constructive, invasive, what's the difference?

filter filter

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if those cameras can only filter out warmists, SJWs, Londonstanites and snowflakes, bundle them up & dump loads into a barge heading east. Slough them away where tide hits the shark-line. Oh how fun ...

Tweaking the layout

[Anonymous Coward]

This technology will be great for understanding how to change the layout. For example, if the camera captures people continuously walking into a wall, they'll know they should add add a walkway there.

if you want to save

[Anonymous Coward]

pedestrians' and cyclists' lives, introduce a bunch of street features that might damage an asshole's car. Put randomly placed yellow pillars in the roads. "Humps" are a start, but "dips" will fuck up the car far more.

Re: if you want to save

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyclists and pedestrians should just be immediately killed for law violation. They don't belong on roadways

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