By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
December 7, 2011

Kansas City’s e-ticketing system is in full swing, but there’s still a few issues to resolve.

The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners discussed the system during their Nov. 22 meeting.

Launched in August, the e-ticketing system is used to issue traffic tickets electronically.

Instead of writing a ticket by hand, a police officer uses a handheld device to log and issue an e-ticket, which is sent electronically to Municipal Court.

KCPD submitted seven pages worth of system issues to the Regional Justice Information Service (REJIS), which developed the e-ticketing system, KCPD Maj. Jan Zimmerman said.

Some of the officer complaints involved the lack of user-friendliness, like cumbersome and time consuming menus.

If officers are spending too much time looking at a computer screen and not paying enough attention to their surroundings, it can create officer safety issues, Zimmerman said.

Part of the problem stems from the officers being trained several months before the system launched, and as a result, forgetting some of the information, she said.

Others are system issues that REJIS is working to address, she said. REJIS representatives will continue to meet with detectives and officers to address any issues, she said.

Another problem is speed connectivity and downloading time, she said.

“The speed of the download is something that needs to be addressed,” Zimmerman said.

Downloads can range from downloading information from a driver’s license to looking up warrants and past incidents. To use the e-ticketing service, the handheld device connects to Sprint’s wireless network.

“In many situations, what we’re seeing is coverage issues where an officer may be under an overpass or in an area with a weaker signal and they’re experiencing a slower download,” said Craig Elford, Midwest area director for Sprint. “This (new) architecture will allow us to provide a much more robust and faster download.”

Beginning in 2012, Sprint will consolidate its network architectures to pool resources, replace tower hardware to enhance connectivity and download speeds, and expand wireless coverage.

By mid-2012, Sprint hopes to launch its 800 megahertz technology in Kansas City for further wireless coverage.

“This will have a dramatic impact on officers,” Elford said of the 800 megahertz technology. “Downloads will take a few seconds at most.”

Sprint will also create “capacity adds,” which will add incremental bandwidth to the cell phone towers to increase speeds. Elford compared it to starting with a two-lane highway and transforming it into an eight-lane highway.

One reason for the current slower download times is how cell phones are being used, he said.

Instead of only texting, customers are now surfing the Internet on their phones, downloading videos and apps.

“It’s really an industry issue,” Elford said. “All of these carriers are seeing this explosion of wireless data. It’s not just low end data types any more.

“It takes a huge amount of capacity on the network and everybody, to be honest, is struggling to build as fast as we can.”

Sprint will meet with the board again in February to discuss its progress on technology upgrades.