Community Transit Provides Safe Way to Travel with Avigilon HD Surveillance System

  • Jun 23, 2009

Avigilon has announced that Community Transit in Snohomish County, Washington, one of the larger transit systems in the region, has deployed the Avigilon High Definition (HD) Surveillance System to capture higher quality surveillance footage for faster identification and improved overall security.

Servicing a 1,297 square mile area including most of Snohomish Country, the University of Washington, downtown Seattle, and the Eastside with more than 650 employees, Community Transit has two base operations sites to house its fleet of 317 fixed route buses and 391 vanpools. Community Transit installed Avigilon five megapixel cameras externally at its Kasch Park Operating Base and at its Merrill Creek Operating Base, in addition to a two megapixel camera inside the vault room where cash is counted, and a three megapixel camera in the lobby for greater coverage. Community Transit manages the Avigilon HD Surveillance System using Avigilon Control Center software with HD Stream Management and has installed one Avigilon HD network video recorder (NVR) at each site to store one week of continuous surveillance footage. The surveillance system monitors most of the transit system's critical infrastructure including diesel storage, fuel islands, bus and vanpool fleets, and surplus vehicles.

"With our previous system we could not capture any incident—whether it was a car theft or suspicious person—with enough clarity for identification," said Don Burr, risk management analyst at Community Transit. "The Avigilon HD Surveillance System offers the image quality and advanced features we need to make any forensic video analysis much easier and more successful."

With the Avigilon HD Surveillance System in place, Community Transit can zoom in on a specific detail with excellent clarity while maintaining full situational awareness and can capture images up to 150 feet for full facial or license plate recognition, regardless of the lighting conditions. Avigilon Control Center software enables Community Transit to record, store, and efficiently manage all the evidence captured by the HD cameras for greater efficiency and more successful investigations.

Since deploying Avigilon's end-to-end HD Surveillance System, Community Transit has reduced investigation times substantially, saving thousands of hours in investigation time. Delivering a stronger price/performance ratio than other HD surveillance systems, the Avigilon HD Surveillance System offers better clarity with fewer cameras than a conventional analog-based system, and is cost-competitive.

"Community Transit has a rich history of embracing innovation and change to make public transit an easy, environmentally sound, and safe way to travel for the citizens of Snohomish Country," said Dave Tynan, vice president of global sales at Avigilon. "By deploying Avigilon's end-to-end HD Surveillance System as an important element of their security initiative, Community Transit can confidently ensure the safety and security of its growing number of riders and staff."

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