City of Calgary LRT CCTV Replacement Project

Customer: City of Calgary

Background and Customer Challenge

The City of Calgary Transit department required end to end surveillance and monitoring of the Calgary Light Rail Transit (LRT) system. A control center is staffed 24/7 and is required to visually verify the safe operations of all the transit platforms. In order to maximize public safety and limit liabilities, the solution required full high definition coverage of all public space, ensuring that subjects could be easily identified and support the conviction of criminal offenders.

CONTAVA Solution

The solution included a 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) Internet Protocol (IP) Cisco backbone network extending to 31 LRT stations, Calgary City Hall and Operations Control Center. The system archives and manages nearly 500 cameras and will easily scale to over 1000 in the near future. Of the new cameras deployed, 394 were megapixel and are operating at full high definition (HD) video. A 33 feet wide x 4 feet tall video wall was also included in the install using bezel-less commercial liquid crystal display (LCD).

All core components of the system have failover capabilities. This includes core network node redundancy, Directory server failover and seamless archiving failover.
The system was also designed to scale with other transit management technologies in addition to security. The systems planned for include access control, passenger message display systems, public address systems, and ticket vending machine payment systems.

Project Outcome

Our client, the City of Calgary Transit is committed to the safety and security of all its customers and employees.  Through the deployment of this IP video surveillance system, CONTAVA was able to achieve exemplary customer satisfaction by installing an extensive security network that deters and detects criminal activity while maintaining public safety. On December 20, 2010 an assault happened on one of Calgary’s light rail transit system platforms. The suspects accused of this incident were caught and arrested within hours by the Calgary Police as a direct result of the quality of the images provided but the new security investment.

Location: Calgary, AB
Scope of Work: Base contract included 31 stations, a control center, a data center, and 19 stations under a change order.
Project Start & Completion: Started in May 2010 and completed in March 2011
Project Value: $6.5M