Canada/Quebec City pulls the plug on its public webcams

Expensive, difficult to maintain and of little use to citizens, Quebec City has officially put an end to its webcam service, which allowed Internet users to watch certain areas of the city live.

Installed for several years, the webcams broadcast their last images on September 23. Unlike the city's traffic cameras, which can only be viewed by municipal employees, these webcams were accessible 24 hours a day by any Internet user. They will not be replaced.

Considering that this service offers few significant benefits to citizens, it was decided to put an end to this program," explains Jean-Pascal Lavoie, spokesperson for the City of Quebec.

Annual savings

For the services of the external supplier, the annual contract amounted to nearly $5,000. To these costs must be added the rental of gondolas required to access webcams located at heights or in inaccessible places. Finally, the mobilization of the City's service teams also represented a time cost, explains Jean-Pascal Lavoie.

Frequent interference and signal loss required frequent server reboots by City teams. Wear and tear on the equipment led to service breakdowns [...] Finally, weather conditions such as snow, wind and extreme cold affected their operation.

A quote from Jean-Pascal Lavoie, spokesman for Quebec City.

The Ministère des Transports is making some traffic webcams available to Internet users in certain major arteries and thoroughfares.

Source: ici.radio-canada.ca/