Edmonton Transit Service Utilizes IP Monitors to Improve Public Safety

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EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada — The Edmonton Transit Service (ETS) is a public transit service that provides multiple modes of transportation, including buses and light-rail transit (LRT) to patrons.

With 18 LRT stations throughout the city service around 100,000 boardings per day. Passengers are monitored by 1,100 cameras across the system with multiple generations of products.

The University LRT Station is a large underground station where a large majority of passengers passing through are students and faculty of the University of Alberta. In order to make passengers feel more safe, the ETS wanted to install monitors in the stairwells.

“By putting in the EIZO monitors, our patrons have more situational awareness in those stairwells. Before entering a stairwell, the monitor is right there, and they can decide whether they want to go that way,” says Alan Baird, senior core communications engineer at ETS. “I think people typically feel safer through just having that presence that an area is being monitored, so this is one of the things that we are doing to try and facilitate that.”

University Station is an older station installed with analog cameras. The biggest issue in migrating from analog to IP is trying to replace all of the coax cabling, according to Baird.

With the EIZO DuraVision FDF2304W-IP monitors, ETS was able to connect them directly to the network and manage them remotely with Genetec Security Center VMS.

Through a plugin, EIZO monitors can be managed remotely through a web interface with features such as drag-and-drop and monitor status.

“By going to a more centralized VMS solution from Genetec and the EIZO monitors, we did not need as much equipment in all the stations, and I can do more from my office without having to go out to site. It makes things a lot more efficient,” Baird explains.

Graham Meeres, regional sales manager at Genetec says, “The EIZO plugin is very unique and something that the security industry has needed for a while. With the EIZO product, we are able to integrate right into the Genetec platform to easily display the cameras.”

Watch the video above to learn more.

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