London Panopticon. Near live London traffic cameras

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Link 1: London Panopticon [Near live London traffic cameras]

 

 

Link 2: London Panopticon | Suprageography

 

The London Panopticon utilises the traffic camera feed from the TfL API, which recently added ~6-second-long video clips from the traffic cameras on TfL “red route” roads, to show the current state of traffic near you. The site loads the latest videos from the nearest camera in each compass direction to you. The images are nearly-live – generally they are up-to-date to within 10-15 minutes. If the camera is “in use” (e.g. being panned/zoomed or otherwise operated by an official to temporarily reprogramme the traffic lights, see an incident etc) then it will blank out. The site is basically just JavaScript, when you view it, your browser is loading the videos directly from TfL’s Amazon cloud-based repository.

 

The Panopticon continuously loops the video clips, and updates with the latest feed from the cameras every two minutes, the same frequency as the underlying source. If you are not in London or not sharing your location, it will default to Trafalgar Square. I’ve added a special “Blackfriars” one which is where the under-construction Cycle Superhighway North/South and East/West routes converge – during rush hour you can already see bursts of cyclists using the new lanes.

 

Try it at vis.oobrien.com/panopticon and note that it only works on desktop web browsers (I’ve tested it on Chrome, Firefox and Safari). It does not work on Chrome on Android. It also didn’t work on Internet Explorer “Edge” when I tested it on a PC. It probably uses a lot of bandwidth, so this is perhaps just as well...