Public Transport of Busses is terrible in Brent. Through research of my own, I’ve noticed that the bus service especially of the ‘Metroline’ company is slacking. The average time for arrival of a 182 is poor. 316 is extremely good with durability and coming on time, however the 182 starts to lag behind, coming late a few odd 5 or ten minutes. This can become a nuisance as a bus set to travel through areas before the morning rush hour end up coming late and driving through the rush hour thus making everyone late on that bus for wherever they are whishing to go.
Although the bus is a double-decker, it still causes problems as in the afternoon roughly around 3 o’ clock to 4 o’ clock as first of all they become overcrowded easily, and also they come every 15 minutes on average (five minutes more than the actual average told by Metroline of ten minutes). 245, 223 and many other bus routes experience the same problems. Furthermore a lot of new drivers forget their route and end up wasting time trying to turn around or drift back into the designated route. Therefore I believe that there is a high need for improving the bus service throughout Brent.
Technology One:
As I’ve outlined before, there is a need in the community for a drastic reduction of crime. Such technologies that can be used to cut this problem down can be found in the Data Capture and Control and Monitoring categories. One such technology that can reduce crime can be CCTV (Closed Circuit Tele-Vision) CCTV is used to monitor large public places and prevent criminal activity. It is a camera set upon a high pole and looks down on public areas. It can monitor registration plates on cars and log them onto a database to check if they are stolen. It can also catch a pick-pocket and their face and any crime committers.
CCTV footage in this form is sent to private headquarters in control of the police who can see the footage upon monitors and can single out crimes. CCTV is also good because the recorded footage can be shown to judges in the event of a prosecution. Being on a pole it can rotate 360 degrees and there are usually two or more cameras on one pole. CCTV has the ability to zoom in on objects or people and is a great technological device as it makes crime committers think twice before committing their crime and being caught on camera. CCTV has been installed in Brent for about five years now. CCTV can range from monitoring public shops to monitoring large areas.
Closed Circuit Tele-Vision helps the local communities’ needs as it makes them feel safe while stepping foot in public places. Advantages of CCTV to locals is that it simply keeps thieves away from busy areas monitored by CCTV and can leave the community feeling safe in areas where such monitoring is installed. Also they are less likely to commit crimes if they are being filmed
A disadvantage for the community however is that crime is simply moved elsewhere in more secluded areas and so people can be driven towards these areas and be victims to quite threatening violence. Even though there is CCTV, it simply is not everywhere and so it doesn’t really leave the community totally safe or very safe for that matter. But, it can’t be installed everywhere for the basic reason of peoples with issues regarding the invasion of privacy. Brent therefore are in a position where they can do nothing because arguments could arise over the issues of privacy.
Therefore CCTV does meet the need in reduction of crime itself, but it still doesn’t leave the community feeling safe among public areas. CCTV could be improved by being around secluded areas where drug exchange or thieving could occur and could be more widely distributed.
Other technologies that could be used to prevent crime may be burglar alarms. These systems ring when set and finds someone inside your home. The ringing can alert neighbours who may see the faces of people fleeing from the home, and burglar alarms send silent messages to the police if burglary occurs and the alarm is not stopped for a set period of time. Burglar alarms can be used in any home and can drastically reduce house burglaries if they are set everywhere.
So all in all CCTV can reduce crime within public areas, however I feel that this only draws crime away to more secluded areas which could lead to more violent crimes out of range from a CCTV camera such as stabbing. Therefore it only partially meets the local communities’ needs.
Technology Two:
As mentioned before, roadside accidents are highly common around schooling areas and there is a high need throughout the local community. Such technology’s that could reduce this are speed cameras. Speed cameras are cameras that are set beside a road that can monitor the speed of cars. If a vehicle is registered going faster than the speed limit set on the camera, it will flash twice and take two pictures of the vehicle. The speed camera can create high resolution images that can clearly show a cars registration and driver inside of the car. Once you are found to be driving over the speed limit of a road you can be fined from 40 to 80 pounds. Speed cameras have been set up at accident ‘hot-spots’ around Brent which are usually around large and fast roads for around 12 years now.
It is effective in making sure that vehicles around Brent aren’t speeding around areas of high accident counts; however many of these areas are nowhere near school areas where accident counts are rising. The reason why speed cameras may not be able to be set up near Brent schools is that the roads populating them are rather small and in no danger of taking speeds further than fifty miles per hour – maybe forty even. Therefore if a speed camera is to be set up in a small road, it would anger car drivers into thinking that the Brent Council is simply out to make money. It would seem very odd to have a speed camera on a small road and could spark outrage.
So the advantages of the speed camera to the local community is that it can slow drivers down near areas of high risk in road accidents, however the disadvantages to the speed camera is that it can simply not be sprung up in small roads around Brent– which are usually the roads surrounding nearby schools. The only reasonable warning to a driver can be a street sign saying a school is nearby.
So in conclusion speed cameras are effective in that they can slow drivers down to reasonable speeds in areas of high road accidents, but they can simply not be put near every school where children are increasingly being victims of these road accidents. And finally, a true thing to say is that speed cameras aren’t fully resolving the local communities’ needs but only resolving a little amount of such need which is to have a reduction in road-side accidents.
Technology Three:
It has been mentioned that children need to get off of the streets and into doing useful activities around the neighbourhood. The local community does not want Brent to be populated with child gangs and under-age drug involvement – any form of illegal drug involvement in any case. Such ways in accomplishing this is that children could be diverted into clubs and sports facilities for example. Technology comes in here with the usage of computers or the internet, games consoles and digital TV. These can be linked in with communication and internet technologies. I will talk about digital TV.
Digital TV in essence, is the availability of TV channels that span from your original 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 channels. Sky, for example is digital TV. It contains just under a thousand different TV programmes and also includes popular radio stations in the U.K. The channels are transmitted to a digital-box via a private satellite dish mounted upon your home. The digital box is ironically a box that wires to your television, thus effectively transmitting the 1000 or so TV channels onto your standard TV.
Digital TV in itself is great as the 1000 + channels (including radio channels) offer huge variety. These range from: kids shows, teenage shows, your average 1-5 channels, spots programmes, bidding programmes, betting programmes, film, entertainment and old programmes (i.e. Faulty Towers, Only Fools and Horses etc.), adult channels, documentary and history channels and many, many more.
The advantages to the community of digital TV is that if it is set up in sports centres or other child facilities to round up hundreds of children and get them watching shows like ‘Trouble’, or ‘Sky Sports’ for example. Digital TV has the potential to be addictive and to get teenagers off of the streets and into TV. Youths may be encouraged to stay indoors more, rather than loitering on Brent’s street corners.
However, this then leads to the disadvantage to the local community. Too much TV and prolonged hours of watching TV can lead to eyesight problems and eventual boredom as the same TV programme can go on for years at a time, slowly replaying old episodes of comedies for example. Also lots of T.V. and almost no exercise habits could lead to obesity. The simple truth is that if kids stay indoors this means less exercise for them and eventual obesity.
So, to conclude, Digital TV is good for the community in that it has the ability to drag children off of the streets, but bad as it can cause eyesight deficiency and can eventually bore off all children – although it can get them addicted for quite a while.
Technology Four:
I outlined before that the bus services around Brent can get frustrating in that you get the odd late arrival of a bus or a driver making an error and taking the wrong route from its designated bus code. Therefore, technology can once again resolve this problem with the usage of Satellite Navigation.
Satellite Navigation can be in the form of a device which receives radio transmissions from satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites can pinpoint the position of the device anywhere in the world through the altitude, latitude and longitude. Satellite Navigation can simply plan a journey to local or distant places by viewing the best possible roads to follow, while trying to make the shortest route.
Satellite Navigation is very effective because you can travel to distant places even though you have no idea how to get there. The Satellite Navigation device will contain a screen that shows a map of the entire area you can be travelling through. When following the devices instructions, a voice will be emitted to inform you in the direction to go (e.g. “follow the road for 400 metres and take the third exit at the roundabout”).
To make a journey, you simply enter the detail of the city, town or village and road you wish to start the journey from. Then you do the same for the destination you want to get to. You can just enter the city for the destination if you want to. The Satellite Navigation device will simply take you into the location borders or its centre via quick and easy roads.
The beauty of the device is that if you go off of the highlighted route to follow, the device can notice this by the change in the location of your devices marker from the route you’re supposed to follow and recalculate an alternative route from your position.
The advantage of Satellite Navigation for the local community is that they can be installed into busses. This is effective because bus drivers will in theory never go off of their bus code route as the entire route could be shown to them via the Satellite Navigation device and spoken also. This means that they should not get lost or go off course and can therefore help the community by reducing the time it takes for each bus to get to each stop. Furthermore less training needs to be given now, therefore more people can be employed meaning higher frequency of buses - a big plus for all people residing in Brent.
However, Satellite Navigation can also have its disadvantages. For example the devices are pretty expensive equipment and therefore open for theft by local youths. Therefore, Satellite Navigation could increase crime rates drastically. This could then mean that busses can be vandalised just for these devices also and just backs up the theory of crime rates rising throughout the local community. Also if there is a roadblock, the device can’t pick up the details for the length of the road block and could re-route the bus through tight roads as it is programmed to take the shortest alternative route to the next bus stop (this could in the event of a road block be sacrificed to carry out repairs in the piping underground). Therefore, in this scenario, the Satellite Navigation device is useless and the driver is left to make up his own decision in the route he/she will take.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, the needs of the local community can be effectively met through several technologies, but not 100% efficiently and therefore I’ve deduced that technology isn’t entirely the way forward in ensuring that the local communities’ needs are met completely. But for now, technology is the next best thing and I think that those which I outlined are important to this conclusion.
