A summary of a talk at CPPA-2018 by Luc Tengueu: Urbanization, the emergence of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft, and increased bicycle, pedestrian traffic are all putting pressure on city infrastructures. Because there is increasingly less real estate available for road expansion, the curb is quickly becoming a strategic asset for many entities such as cities, airports, hotels, public venues and universities.

1. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
Managing the Curb
Author: Luc Tengueu
Vice President Vimoc Technologies
E: luc@vimoc.com
Urbanization, the emergence of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft, and increased bicycle,
pedestrian traffic are all putting pressure on city infrastructures. Because there is increasingly less real estate available for
road expansion, the curb is quickly becoming a strategic asset for many entities such as cities, airports, hotels, public
venues and universities.
Figure 1: Curbside Chaos – new challenges and opportunities
Once utilized exclusively for transient stopping of buses and taxis, access to the curb is now critical for TNC drivers,
shuttles, personal vehicles, and emerging sharing options like scooters. Conversely, the absence of well-managed curbs
has become a traffic and safety issue. Airports, for instance, are seeing a dramatic surge of ride-sharing vehicles on their
premises which is creating increased congestion, frustrating traveler experiences and a side-effect of reduced parking
revenue.
At VIMOC, we have been working with several customers on ways to better manage the curb. While there is no single
correct approach, we have started to see several key ingredients to a successful solution.

2. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
The first lesson we have learned is that the goals and objectives behind curb management differ by venue or situation.
We have sometimes seen the curbside managed as a revenue-generating opportunity and other times as a critical
enabler of a safe and positive visitor experience.
In all cases, we have seen that these five elements are essential to a successful and complete curb management
solution.
1. Pedestrian (and bicycle) detection
2. Vehicle Location Services
3. Curbside “zoning” for different uses (buses, service vehicles, police/fire, TNC, bikes, scooters)
4. Congestion detection and real-time correction
5. Policy enforcement
Figure 2: Five elements of a full Curb Management Solution
A key theme across all of these elements is the degree of automation required. Traditionally, pedestrian detection and
vehicular location has been a manual process. Traffic data is gathered manually on regular intervals and used to
extrapolate daily, weekly and monthly patterns. While this approach makes sense if the data required is temporary and
for short-term planning purposes, it is insufficient when the goal is real-time automated curb management.
We believe automated, accurate and real-time data collection is key to the future of curbside management. We also
believe that notification, policy enforcement and revenue collection must also be automated in the future. The following
sections dive deeper into each of these elements.
1. Pedestrian and Bicycle Traffic Detection
There are generally two approaches to automated pedestrian and bicycle detection: specialized sensors or vision-based
systems. Both approaches provide the continuous real-time data feeds required for a complete solution.
Curbside ”Zoning”
Congestion Detection and Correction
Policy Enforcement
Vehicle Location Services
Pedestrian and Bicycle Traffic Detection

3. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
Discrete or unidimensional sensors like motion sensors, infrared, magnetic loops or LIDAR sensors can be deployed in key
locations to detect people, bicycles and other personal transportation devices. There are, however, some important
limitations with discrete sensors or magnetic loops that may give false positives or miss non-metallic objects.
Vision-based systems, on the other hand, address many of the limitations of discrete sensors because of the rich multi-
dimensional information available from each video feed (pedestrians, bikes, objects moving, color, location, etc.). There
are, however, two types of vision-based or camera-based solutions on the market with different approaches to detection.
One class of vision-based solutions is based on specialized cameras with embedded software in the camera to detect
objects and feed cloud analytics in the background. These specialized cameras can be easily located to cover specific areas
and then integrated and correlated to provide a single view across mutiple zones or areas. But is this really that simple?
Not in truth because each of these specialized cameras works in a silo. Integration work is typically required with software
customization and hence increases the total cost of ownership for the solution. Another limitation of this approach is that
the specialized cameras are typically pre-programmed with specific object detection use cases. Detecting a wider variety
of objects or situations requires additional specialized cameras.
At VIMOC, we have designed a platform that can receive high definition video feeds from multiple off-the-shelf cameras
and dynamically detect a wide variety of objects and situations in real-time. Because we have designed our platform to
run on the “edge” of the network, we are able to perform complex, highly accurate deep-learning detection in real-time.
Having the intelligence on the “edge” also lets us react in real-time, whether it be triggering notifications, lights or curbside
signage. The intelligence is not limited to the camera and the software can process feeds from multiple cameras
concurrently.
For effective curb management, real-time and accurate detection of people and bicycles/scooters is essential. But it is
not good enough to just count people and bicycles. Situational awareness is key. Curb management requires the ability
to trigger real-time actions that correlate information about the people on the curb with the vehicular traffic seeking pick
them up or drop them off.

4. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
2. Vehicle Location Services
Manual detection and recognition of traffic entering or exiting curbside locations is obviously not scalable but many
Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) system exist.
These more traditional solutions generally function the same way: cars going through a given geo-fenced area are assigned
and provided with an RFID (Radio Frequency Identifier) transponder. As the car travels through the area of interest, an
RFID reader identifies the car. This system can effectively count and monitor vehicles traveling in or through that area.
This technology is widely used for automated toll gate systems. Airports also use this type of system to monitor and
effectively charge ground transportation companies (per ride) traveling through the airport premises, such as taxis and
limousines. A widely used system at airports is from Gatekeeper system.
With TNC drivers, these solutions have proven to be less reliable as they present new challenges: a driver could be making
a personal trip, a driver could be part of many TNC companies, a driver might not be in a known database like other ground
transportation companies.
These challenges worsen when the geo-fenced area does not have clear entry and exit points. How can the TNC be located
in a given geo-fenced area like an airport? One of the more advanced solutions to date has been developed by San
Francisco Airport (SFO) and is currently offered to other airports through an AAAE (American Association of Airport
Executives) app. To construct their solution, SFO worked closely with the TNC companies and tapped into their respective
application data feeds to retrieve live information on cars travelling to/from the airport premises. They developed the
ability to accurately count the number of rides (pick up/drop off) from TNCs and then charge them a nominal fee (for
example, $3.80/ride). The TNCs are required to provide the number of rides on a monthly basis and the AAAE app acts as
a way to further audit the data provided. To illustrate the success at SFO, they went from almost $0 in revenue in 2012 to
$26M revenue in 2017. Today, TNC companies account for 70% of ground transportation revenue at SFO.
Geo-fencing and similar technology provides a way of locating vehicles that have a self-identifiable means of being
recognized, such as an application. It represents an important element in the total solution. But what about the curb
itself? There are still inherent challenges to monitor it once cars are on the premises we will discuss in the following
sections.

5. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
3. Curbside “Zoning”
The Curb is important for different purposes and different vehicle types. Cities or venues may find they need to have areas
specifically allocated for buses, service cars, delivery cars, TNCs, bicycles, scooters, etc. Zones may also be created to
distribute traffic across multiple areas to avoid congestion.
This means that we not only have to solve for detecting a vehicle entering a curbside location, but also know if the vehicle
matches the allowable class of vehicle for that zone.
To achieve this, vision-based vehicle detection is required. VIMOC Technologies and other vision-based systems complete
the solution elegantly and in real-time. With vehicle detection by class, VIMOC’s Curb management solution is able to
detect and classify multiple specific types of vehicles, from services cars to buses to bicycles in real-time.
When combined with a “zoning” map defined by the venue operator or city, VIMOC can not only detect different vehicles,
but also recognize exceptions or policy violations such as the wrong class of vehicle in a specific zone or perhaps a vehicle
that has exceed an allowable duration. The intelligence of detection combined with zoning policy is critical to a completion
solution.
Figure 3: Zoning at UCLA using Vimoc Technologies at Gateway Plaza (Bus, TNC, Hotel, Service cars)

6. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
4. Congestion Detection and Correction
For busy curbs such as in airports, vehicles may linger for a long time resulting in traffic congestion and potential safety
risks. The first element to managing congestion are policies or rules, such as a limit of five minutes for a drop-off, pick-up
event or having no more than five cars parked at a curb zone for one-minute.
Similar to “zoning,” however, the policies mean nothing if the exceptions or violations are not automatically detected and
corrected. While manual detection and correction is still often used (think of the traffic personnel at your local airport),
VIMOC is seeking to automate this element in our total solution as well. By detecting “crowding” or “lingering” of vehicles,
VIMOC is able to detect policy violations or proactively trigger means of correcting the congestion.
The key is once again that this detection can occur in real-time so that corrective actions can also occur in real-time. Cloud
analytics are also extremely important for long-term assessment of problems and longer-term corrective actions.
Information gathered allows the venue or city operators to continuously assess the usage of the curb and to update rules
as needed. Our ultimate complete curbside solution includes both real-time detection and correction as well as long-term
analytics.
Figure 4: Exception detection using Vimoc Technologies (Configurable rules and policies)

7. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
5. Policy Enforcement
The final element in our solution combines all of the previous detection and reactive elements together by adding the
governance and consequence/reward system. An effective curbside consequence/reward system should be appropriate
to the mission and policies of the venue and there is no single answer for all situations. But from our experience, there
are two types of enforcement strategies most venues should consider:
▪ Soft Enforcement: For many venue operators, a financial consequence or punitive event is not desired. In these
situations, the enforcement event might be as simple as a discrete notification to a security guard with a picture in an
e-mail or SMS message. The venue operator can now send enforcement personnel on the ground to write tickets to
violators based on these automated notifications. With the proper application integration, soft enforcement
messages could potentially also be sent directly to the driver in question. The benefit of soft enforcement is that it
becomes a very powerful tool for ground transportation or security personnel while still allowing them to use their
personal judgement and style to correct the situation.
Figure 5: Soft Enforcement message example using Vimoc Technologies
▪ Hard Enforcement: In those situations where a stronger consequence is desired, two critical elements must be
supported by the curb management solution: Firstly, the ability to quickly capture the violation data and potentially
share it with a separate application (such as a security operations monitor) and secondly, to capture the visual
evidence supporting that data. The system in this scenario must be able to record a video of the exception and send
a high-quality picture of the car with timestamps and other evidences. This might be used to look up a license plate
for instance. Hard enforcement allows the venue operator to optimize the use of the curb by encouraging good
behavior from drivers while consequenting bad behavior.
VIMOC Technologies in its next generation Curb Management offering is adding Hard enforcement capabilities. It is also
VIMOC’s intention to integrate directly with Uber/Lyft (and other TNCs) to support the option of direct
reward/consequence actions if required by the venue operator.
But the key strategy here is that different venues will want different enforcement policies that align with their mission,
their brand and their goals. There is no single answer to enforcement and a robust curb management solution must be
able to handle multiple different options.

8. October 30, 2018 www.vimoc.com
In Conclusion
As our cities and venues address the changing landscape around the ‘curb,’ venue operators are left with the challenge of
finding the right technologies that will not only enable immediate improvement but aso set themselves up on a roadmap
that will continue to evolve. There is no “one size fits all” solution. It is therefore important to select technologies that are
flexible and extensible to these future requirements.
At VIMOC, we are working towards a world in which the management of the curb is an integrated, automated and
intelligent end-to-end solution. What if the Curb were ‘aware’ of the people waiting, the vehicles approaching, the
permissable zones and the congestion or crowding that is occuring? More importantly, what if the Curb automatically
directed things – sending notifications to the awaiting passengers, oncoming vehicles and local security personnell?
This will require multiple pieces to come together but we believe this is ultimately the “Smart Curb” we expect.
Figure 6: Vimoc Technologie’s Vision of a Smart Curb
Geo-Fence Zone
Crowdsdetectedinzones
VehicleLimit exceededinzones
Latest sharedvehiclenotifiedto
meet latest riderat zone
Latest Ridertoldtogotozone
What if…
Nonewvehiclesuntil zonesunderlimit