 Cambridge Regional College Jct Eastbound |
 Cambridge Regional College Jct Westbound |
 Cambridge Regional College (PTZ) |
 C65 SCIENCE PARK STOP |
 C62 Milton Rd (PTZ) |
 C61 Milton Rd Junction W-bound (F) |
 Graham Rd Jct E/b |
 B1049 Histon Rd (PTZ) |
 Chiefton Way Jct E/b |
 C81 Chariot Way Junction E-b (F) |
 Kings Hedges Rd / Orchard Pk E/b |
 Kings Hedges Rd / Orchard Pk W/b |
 C115 TRUMPINGTON STOP |
 C111 Trumpington Cut North (F) |
 C112 Trumpington Cut South (F) |
 C101 Cambridge Biomedical Campus Junction |
 C117 Trumpington Cut South |
 C116 Trumpington Cut North |
Images are linked to each camera’s webpage. The council provides a new image every five minutes, images above update automatically.
Cambridgeshire County Council list links to recent images from nineteen traffic monitoring CCTV cameras from their Live Travel > Traffic Cameras webpage.
Images from forty-three cameras available to view online, however twenty-three are unlisted. The full list of available camera images is as follows:
- A1096 Westbound
- St Ives B1096 Harrison Way
- C7 ST IVES P&R CAR PARK (WEST)
- C6 ST IVES P&R CAR PARK (EAST)
- C8 ST IVES P&R CAR PARK (NORTH)
- Swavesey Stop
- Swavesey Jct E/b
- Swavesey Jct W/b
- B1050 Jct Eastbound
- B1050 Jct Westbound
- C29 Longston P&R Access Rd (F)
- C25 LONGSTANTON STOP
- Longstanton P&R entrance
- C27 LONGSTON P&R CAR PARK (SOUTH)
- C26 LONGSTON P&R CAR PARK (EAST)
- C35 OAKINGTON STOP
- Oakington Jct Eastbound
- Oakington Jct Westnound
- Histon Park Ln Westbound
- Histon Stop Westbound side
- Histon Stop Eastbound side
- Histon Station Rd Eastbound
- Histon Station Rd Westbound
- CRC Jct Eastbound
- CRC Jct Westbound
- CRC (PTZ)
- C65 SCIENCE PARK STOP
- C62 Milton Rd (PTZ)
- C61 Milton Rd Junction W-bound (F)
- Graham Rd Jct E/b
- B1049 Histon Rd (PTZ)
- Chiefton Way Jct E/b
- C81 Chariot Way Junction E-b (F)
- Kings Hedges Rd / Orchard Pk E/b
- Kings Hedges Rd / Orchard Pk W/b
- C115 TRUMPINGTON STOP
- C111 Trumpington Cut North (F)
- C112 Trumpington Cut South (F)
- C5 ST IVES STOP
- C9 St Ives P&R Access Rd (F)
- C101 CBC Junction
- C117 Trumpington Cut South
- C116 Trumpington Cut North
Recent images from those cameras within Cambridge are shown at the top of this article.
What I suspect has happened is a council officer has selected the cameras they consider to be of most use to the public looking at traffic and have published a list of those. The cameras which almost exclusively cover the guided busway have been excluded from the public list. That appears sensible. I can’t imagine why the park and ride car park cameras are listed though if the aim is to provide traffic information.
My attention was drawn to these cameras when the traffic camera system was included in a list of resources published in advance of a Hack Cambridge event to be held on the 31st of October; encouraging local residents to look at what is available and think about what could be done with it.
Quite what you could usefully hack together using images from these cameras I don’t know. Maybe there are people who would find a Twitter account regularly tweeting an image of Milton Road useful?
TfL suggest uses for their camera images:
- Freight or delivery services could use the live feed to follow traffic traffic conditions and plan routes accordingly
- Radio stations could add a live camera feed to a traffic news page
- Organisations with staff intranets could add the traffic camera feed so people can plan their journeys home
Perhaps some good first steps would be a comprehensive list, promoting their existence, and getting more cameras online.
While “PTZ” in the Cambridgeshire camera names suggests the cameras can be panned, tilted and zoomed the council doesn’t appear to have made these controls available to members of the public viewing the images online.
While researching these cameras I read that Cambridge City Council provide some of its CCTV images to the County Council for traffic monitoring (something omitted from published information on the City’s CCTV system), and that the police now use ANPR cameras initially installed to monitor congestion for monitoring cars entering and leaving Cambridge.
Not all of the County Council’s traffic monitoring cameras appear to be available online. For example the cameras on Newmarket Road at the junction with Tesco and the retail park are not present, neither is the camera on the Milton Road, King’s Hedges Road, Green End Road junction.
There are many online CCTV cameras covering roads in the UK, including hundreds in London. The Traffic England traffic map currently lists two active cameras near Cambridge:
Cambridgeshire County Council currently asks search engines not to crawl pages on its live travel data webpages.
The text overlaid on the on the camera images at Cambridge Regional College could be confusing. “W” is marked on the east facing image titled “CRC Jct Eastbound” Perhaps the “W” indicates the camera is on the west side of the junction and “Eastbound” correctly describes the direction the camera is pointing.
However the camera titled “Kings Hedges Rd / Orchard Pk E/b” faces west; so it looks like something is inconsistent.
Maybe more eyes looking at the busway will result in more Cambridge News stories about cars being on the busway when they shouldn’t. Though I think now a car has to be spectacularly trapped, ideally with a ground level photo for it to be news.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Car-gets-stuck-guided-busway-Cambridge/story-22366410-detail/story.html
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/London-taxi-driver-red-faced-cab-caught-car-trap/story-25876347-detail/story.html
Certainly something that Cambridge 105 could take on board, but I notice that most of the key roads that we might include in our travel bulletins are missing. You can no doubt guess them without listening Newmarket Road/East Road, Hills Road/Gonville Place, etc.
You’re such a freak. Get a life you aspie freak.
According to Oxford Dictionaries Aspie means “a person with Asperger’s syndrome”. Uban Dictionary’s definition states: “Aspie is an affectionate term, and is not meant as a put down” but the context of the word’s use in xy’s comment suggests they did not intend to mean it affectionately in this case.
I think we need to pursue a more civilised society where insulting someone on the basis of a perception they have a medical condition is not acceptable.
Cambridgeshire Police do make a hate crime reporting form available online; if anyone wants to make a report as a “witness” (the form doesn’t really appear suited to online crime though), the IP address the comment was posted from was 81.152.12.143 with User-Agent “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko”. According to the times in the logs the user requested my home page at 17:54:52, this article at 17:55:47 and posted the comment at 17:56:56 so it doesn’t appear to have been a carefully considered comment. This was the first visit by this IP address since I published the article. (The sever is using GMT, the times shown on the comments are an hour out).
I’ve not made a report myself as I’m not sure it meets my threshold for reporting things to the police; and the published form doesn’t give me confidence that this is the kind of thing the police want reported.
I will leave the comment published as I think it’s important to openly debate the levels of hatred and unpleasantness which currently go hand-in-hand with discussions about how we run our society, meaning, I fear, many people don’t express their views.
See also:
I’ve changed the time on the server.
It’s not so much a medical condition as a disability, and what’s hateful about the comment is labeling those on the autism spectrum as ‘freaks’ (in addition to making personal comments about you Richard).
With the 25%-40% cuts to the police budget perhaps it would be more efficient for your readers to investigate the source of this comment themselves. How reliable are the free IP tracing websites which pinpoint the source to an address in London?
Richard,
I wish to apologise unreservedly for my comment. You are trying to maintain debate in Cambridge and you deserve better than a cheap and offensive remark from me. I think citizen journalism is vital and in fact more important than ever in today’s age.
It is a disabilist coment that I would never dream of normally making. I can only attribute it to my own poor mental health at the time which is ongoing. If you wish to take this further I understand, however, I hope this apology is taken in the spirit of reconciliation and respect.
Regards,
XY
That’s a response from the same IP from which the original comment was made.
I’m grateful for the apology and accept it. Thanks to XY for retuning.
Thank you Richard, you’re a gentleman.
Over and out.
These camera images have enabled people to follow recent news stories live:
Hi Richard,
My friend attempted to follow a bus through the Harrison Way crossing at St Ives this morning but cycled into the car trap instead and fell off. I was hoping to find some amusing CCTV footage of the event but none of the links above are working. Do you know if they have been moved elsewhere?
Many thanks,
Matt
I don’t know why the council’s CCTV cameras are no longer online, perhaps it’s a temporary error; but they never made historical footage available, they just published new frame every five minutes.
Your friend could make a “subject access” request to the council for footage of his incident. I wouldn’t suggest doing that just to laugh at what happened as it will incur a cost to the public.