[contingencies]

Re. SCATS, I used to work at the RTA as a consultant for another company back in ~2000 when it was still based as Eveleigh. My understanding is and has always been that they were the ~first to put loops under the road to count traffic but the other elements of the system were not that amazing. They still had a PDP live, and also ran the Sydney portion of the emergency services radio network from the same data center. A control system would show real time traffic densities. We were adding a PTZ-capable remote video on demand component circa 2000 using a combination of 128K ISDN and fiber. I wrote some kind of last minute multiplexing PTZ data control bridge kludge in perl. The idea was that, after the traffic system detected an anomaly, the control system operators could "dial in" and "look around" to "determine" the cause of traffic issues and create an appropriate response using their bridgedeck mounted joysticks straight out of the 80s. We sold some to the Philippines and I got to go, as an 18 year old, and party hard with the locals after we signed a deal with the mayor of Manila. Fun times. Corrupt as knifespoon.

These days I assume most people/companies/governments source their traffic flow info from Google because it has more 'active' sensors in so far as every car has at least one mobile phone. Telcos could and should also sell this type of data in an anonymous format. Large toll roads track individual vehicles with a combination of wireless billing systems and numberplate ID so they are effectively able to provide a similar solution for those high value roads.