London Panopticon

The London Panopticon utilises the traffic camera feed from the TfL API, which recently added 10-second-long video clips from the traffic cameras on TfL “red route” roads, to show the current state of traffic near you. It 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 15 minutes. If the camera is “in use” (e.g. being operated by an official to reprogram the traffic lights, see an incident etc) then it will blank out.

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 probably uses a lot of bandwidth, so this is perhaps just as well.

I’ve named it after the Panopticon, a concept postulated by Jeremy Bentham, co-founder of University College London, where I work, for easy management of prisons. The Panopticon encourages good behavior, because you can’t see the watcher, so you never know if you are being watched. Kind of like the traffic cameras.