Client

As the former capital and largest city of Myanmar, Yangon has actively developed into the manufacturing hub in recent years, becoming an attractive investment destination for labor-intensive manufacturing with the increasing number of industrial zones in Yangon, with over 20 industrial zones currently established. Investors not only could enjoy the specific investment incentives provided by the Myanmar government, but also leverage the advantages of better infrastructure and logistics support, including a recently upgraded international airport and multiple ports that handle the majority of the country's trade. 

However, as the population of the big city becomes increasingly dense and economic activities grow, the transportation network may fail to keep up, leading to the emergence of congestion issues. Traffic congestion is a problem faced by all major cities, and Myanmar is no exception. ZKTeco’s license plate recognition solution was to address the serious traffic congestion in Yangon.

The Major Cause of Traffic Congestion – Toll Plaza as a Bottle Neck

A large number of vehicles is not the sole and sufficient cause of traffic congestion, just as a large river flow does not necessarily lead to flooding if the capacity and flow speed of the river channel remain unchanged. Traffic congestion often occurs at road intersections or areas with reduced vehicle speeds, as obstacles on the road surface can impede the flow of vehicles. One common road obstacle is the toll plaza on highways, where vehicles must stop to pay before going on to drive, which can create a chain reaction and backlog, leading to traffic congestion during periods of high traffic volume.

The urban traffic congestion problem has also worsened with the increasing demand for logistics and transportation, particularly on Mandalay Highway – a major highway th

at serves as a primary transportation hub. The toll plazas on this highway faced severe congestion during peak hours, posing a significant obstacle to the Myanmar government's ambition to develop the industrial and commercial sectors. Therefore, addressing this issue had become a pressing concern for the government.

Requirements

Quick and Efficient Toll Procedure

The toll management on Mandalay Highway used the card swiping method, where vehicles must stop at the toll booth, take out their payment card to swipe on the card reader to make the payment before being able to drive. This method, inherently time-consuming, is usually affected by various factors, such as inaccurate parking positions or difficulties in locating the card, further prolonging the stop time. 

In fact, the act of stopping at the toll plaza plays a crucial role in contributing to traffic congestion. As the density of vehicles on the road increases, the average spacing between vehicles decreases. When the spacing falls below a critical threshold, the braking action of the front vehicle will be transmitted and accumulate towards the vehicles behind, leading to increasingly greater braking actions for the vehicles further back in the queue. This cascading effect can ultimately result in the vehicles at the end of the queue having to come to a complete stop. 

Therefore, the key to effectively solving the traffic congestion caused by the bottleneck effect is to minimize, or even eliminate, the need for vehicles to stop at the toll plaza. By reducing the toll stop time as much as possible, or even avoiding the need to stop altogether, this would be an effective solution to the traffic congestion problem.

Minimizing the Impact of Solution Installation

The transportation department in Yangon expected to improve the toll collection system. However, as the work involves the main arterial roads, the construction project is inevitably going to impact traffic flow. The department hoped to minimize the traffic congestion and disruptions that might arise from the replacement and installation of a large amount of heavy equipment.

Solution Details

Free-Flow Tolling with ZKTeco LPRC3000

Considering the needs and the actual scenario of Mandalay Highway, ZKTeco has installed a total of 34 units ZKTeco LPRC3000 License Plate Recognition Cameras at various toll plazas along the highway. All the LPRC3000 cameras have been installed alongside the existing traffic lanes, without the need to dismantle the original toll booths and gate equipment. 

All the installed ZKTeco LPRC3000 cameras have been connected to the customer's existing toll management system using the software development kit (SDK) provided by ZKTeco, integrating with the existing toll fare management system of the highway. 

With the implementation of this solution, vehicles can now pass through the toll plaza without the need to stop, swipe a card, or make a payment. The LPRC3000 license plate recognition cameras can quickly and accurately identify the vehicle's license plate at speeds up to 20 km/h and transmit the information to the toll management system. The system can then use the pre-registered vehicle data to automatically calculate and charge the toll based on the distance travelled by the vehicle.

Identifying Vehicles without Stopping Them

LPRC3000 is a license plate recognition camera developed by ZKTeco which utilizes 0.5 TOPS chip and deep-learning algorithm, enabling it to precisely identify license plates in 100ms with over 99% accuracy rate. Most importantly, LPRC3000 is capable of identifying license plates of vehicles at or below 20km/h from as far distance as 10m. Thus, instead of completely stopping, vehicles are only required to drive at a stable speed in order to complete the toll procedure, which efficiently solves the traffic congestion caused by the bottleneck effect of the toll plazas.

Strong Adaptability to the Environment of Highway

Apart from precise and reliable license plate recognition ability, it also requires stable operation of the devices in order to achieve smooth and quick free-flow toll management. As the toll plazas are located in the highway outdoor environment, weather and environmental impacts and interference, including rain, sunlight and dust, could disable the devices from proper functioning. The environmental adaptability is well considered in the design of ZKTeco LPRC3000, thus it is enabled to precisely identify license plates even in intense darkness of 0.1 lux, preventing it from the lack of accuracy of license plate recognition at night. Also, LPRC3000 has ultimately wide working range of both temperature from -30°C to 70°C, and relative humidity under 90%, and IP65 waterproof & dustproof protection level, enabling it to be deployed in a wide diversity of vehicle management scenarios like outdoor carparks and roads with efficient and stable operation.

Flexible Integration with Third-party System

ZKTeco offered it license plate recognition SDK (software development kit) for flexible integration with the existing toll fare management system, thus there has been no need to replace the barriers and the system being used. ZKTeco’s SDK has rich API interfaces covering license plate recognition, vehicle information enquiry and system control etc. with standard RESTful protocol for seamless integration with third-party systems. With SDK integration, LPRC3000 have been directly connected with the existing third-party toll fare management system, without any middleware or middle software needed, enabling quicker and more direct communication, which maximize the cost effectiveness of the solution, and minimize the impact on the highway. ZKTeco, as a one-stop solution provider, offers timely, suitable and professional technical supports, and ensures the problems and challenges in the solution development are well solved.

On-site Photos