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Case Study: Surveillance Cameras at Secaucus Junction

New Jersey Transit's new station finds other benefits in its security cameras

For every 15 or so cameras, there's a digital video recorder in an onsite data center that holds more than 7 terabytes of dataenough for at least 90 days of video. The DVRs are then hooked into Transit's wide area network, so that anyone with access rights can log on, view live or archived feed, select a length of footage not to be overwritten, or pull footage back onto the central network.

But wait, as they say on late-night infomercialsthere's more. The DVRs run software from Nice Systems that does intelligent video analysis. This means that the software can be set up to count customers, detect dropped bags, track intruders in secure areas such as tunnels, monitor cars stopped in no-parking areas, or detect unusually large crowds that might indicate some kind of problem.

Slack pulls up a stream of video he's downloaded from a DVR. It shows Secaucus Junction's passenger drop-off point. A yellow circle appears around an idling car in the kiss-and-ride area, and then later automatically turns red. Slack won't share specifics about how the system is set up, but he says the software can automatically trigger an announcement on the public-address system that parking is not allowed in the area. More important, it can send alerts to either a pager, cell phone or wireless PDA. Then, an officer onsite can investigate what's going on, and either make sure the car gets moved or override the alert if the idling vehicle is a police car.

Bober says that during the Republican National Convention last September in New York City, the software also helped prevent an entire station from being evacuated. Transit police were able to quickly trace back, see who had dropped a bag and determine that the person was not a threat, just a forgetful employee.

That's not to say that New Jersey commutersan often cranky and sleep-deprived lot who faced a summer fare hike on July 1have appreciated the difference. "Terrorists should just leave NJT alone," wrote one visitor to NJ.com's Transit forum several days after the London subway blasts. "[NJT is] perfectly capable of disrupting service and screwing up operations without any outside assistance."

But Slack, at least, is confident that Transit is doing the most it can with what it has. "New Jersey Transit has been a business that has continued to increase servicesmore trains, more trips"without adding to its staff, he explains. "We put so many technologies in over the years because we couldn't have the eyes. Now you take that single eye"the camera"and share it with everybody, and it's very valuable."