Before the upgrade, the city dealt with a variety of issues that compromised its ability to access critical video footage from its transit system. One of the most detrimental challenges was the limited one-week span in which footage was available. After that window closed, the footage was wiped from the server to free up storage.
“In the past, when we received these inquiries, we often weren’t able to retrieve the footage we needed because of the limitations of having only a week of backup,” says Rohan Anderson, a senior procurement specialist with the Montebello Department of Transportation.
Local governments may find it challenging to identify proper video storage for surveillance systems, and those challenges become greater when storing video surveillance files from moving trains or buses. Ideal object storage solutions for public transit systems should allow for transmission across a wide area; space and cost flexibilities; metadata tagging for geospatial data; and synchronization with time, distance and the speed of a carrier.
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More Efficient Surveillance and Storage Solutions
With its fleet of 72 buses, Montebello Bus Lines is the third-largest municipal bus system in Los Angeles County. Founded in 1931, the system serves 950 stops and more than 8 million riders each year. Although the crime rate in Montebello is well below the average throughout the county, the city realized that its transit system needed a significant update to bring it into the 21st century.
“We realized that what we had was not efficient,” Anderson says, “so we looked at what neighboring agencies were doing, including the types of systems they were using.”
Recognizing the need for a more robust and consistently accessible surveillance solution, Montebello sought not only to improve the quality of the video it recorded but also to lengthen its life span. To achieve that, the city knew it needed significantly greater storage capacity and ultimately invested in an object storage platform from Cloudian.