The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) will deploy mobile video surveillance systems from March Networks on its 669-vehicle, fixed-route bus fleet in the Baltimore area. Terms of the contract were not disclosed.

MTA selected the solution based on its remote wireless downloading and monitoring capabilities and plans to have its entire bus fleet upgraded with the March Networks solution by March 2011. The technology will allow the agency to dramatically improve incident investigations and coordinate with police and homeland security operations.

Currently, information from about 30 buses equipped with March Network’s 5412 DVRs can be downloaded automatically via a wireless network as vehicles enter one of four depots, greatly speeding up the manual retrieval process used on other buses.

In the future, the MTA plans to enable real-time video monitoring while buses are in service, taking advantage of the solution’s support for remote video access over GSM/CDMA/EVDO and WiMax mesh networks.

MTA will work to provide law enforcement and homeland security agencies with access to the live video captured by cameras mounted both inside and outside of the buses to provide real-time, roaming surveillance in the case of an emergency or a security incident.

“The March Networks solution supports our plan to become one of the first transportation authorities in the United States to deploy a live, metro-wide surveillance capability using a state-of-the-art wireless mesh network,” says Tammi Bolden, manager of systems and equipment, MTA. “It has already significantly improved our ability to retrieve and store video and remotely monitor system health to ensure optimal performance.”

MTA’s fixed-route bus fleet serves 250,000 passengers daily.

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