The City of London Traffic and Environmental Zone

The mounting sophistication and determination of the criminal and terrorist means the Police are increasingly turning to the use of technology in support of their every day Policing activities. It is with this background that the City of London Police embraced technology to secure the City of London against further terrorist incident. A key tool was to be the establishment of the City of London Traffic and Environmental Zone originally termed in the media as 'The Ring of Steel'. Implementation of the Zone was undertaken over one weekend and involved the closure of a significant number of roads to establish a cordoned area which now covers some two thirds of the City of London. Traffic enters via a series of eleven entry points and egress is via thirteen exit points. The impact on the traffic flow around the cordoned area was minimised through reconfiguring and timing traffic signals within and around the perimeter of the Zone. Establishing the Zone enabled the police to monitor all traffic movements entering the City of London. Monitoring is undertaken by Police Officers deployed at each of the entry points, but also through use of advanced electronic surveillance techniques. CCTV is a key element in the management of the Zone. At the outset it was understood that CCTV in its most simplistic sense is generally reactive unless significant human resources are allocated. Applying further technology to CCTV in order to automate surveillance was therefore seen as essential if full benefits were to accrue, and the cost of managing the Zone kept at an acceptable level.