Air Quality & Weather Systems

Ecuador’s Municipal Public Transport Company of Guayaquil (EPMTG), which was created to manage traffic and pedestrian access routes in the Ecuadorian city, is to implement an intelligent transportation system (ITS) from January 2014. A traffic management centre will monitor the city’s 350,000 vehicles using cameras, photo radar, traffic signals and variable message signs. Around 1,500 intelligent traffic lights will be connected to 150 cameras. An international tender to implement the system was laun

Technology installed on the toll system in the Czech Republic by Kapsch TraffiCom is identifying seven to ten wrong-way drivers per month, according to says Ctirad Weissmann, director of the National Transportation Information Centre. Kapsch and the Czech Road and Motorway Directorate (ŘSD) received the prestigious Czech Transportation Technology of the Year 2012 award for the project. The system for the identification of wrong-way drivers has been part of the Czech toll system on highways D1, D2 and D5 sin

The London Assembly has written to the Mayor Boris Johnson to urge him to look at bringing in a ultra-low emission zone for central London sooner than 2020 and not to restrict plans to new vehicles only. In February this year the Mayor said he wanted to make almost all vehicles driving in central London during working hours zero or low emission by 2020 and asked Transport for London (TfL) to prepare plans for a new ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ). The London Assembly Environment Committee has now written to

IBTTA executive director and CEO Patrick D. Jones looks at tolling’s resilience in an increasingly unpredictable and cash-strapped world. Turbulent times call for transportation agencies to move smarter. That’s why resilience and preparedness have become watchwords in every aspect of tollway operations. From having the financial resources to invest in construction, maintenance and roadway operations, to having up-to-date emergency plans and social media strategies to cope with severe weather, tolling agenci

David Crawford reviews national and regional initiatives to boost Canada’s weather forecasting. Over the next five years Canada’s national weather services are due to benefit from a CAN$248 million injection of funding into the Environment Canada (EC) department to deliver timelier and more accurate weather warnings and forecasts for users including travellers and transport operators. The scheme, set out in the country’s 2013 Economic Action Plan, is to revitalise the services with new investments in federa

A survey into the effectiveness of weather-related variable message signs on a trans-mountain highway has some interesting results, as Alexis Bacelar told ITS Europe. A study in the Massif Central region of France evaluating the usefulness of winter weather warning signs has highlighted the effect of variable message signs on driver behaviour. During the winter of 2009-2010, road operator Massif Central Direction Interdépartementale des Routes (MC DIR) started installing bad weather-specific variable messag

Idaho’s use of key performance indicators to determine the effectiveness of its winter maintenance programme put it on the Best of ITS America shortlist. Idaho Transportation Department’s budget for winter maintenance is more than $25m – almost half of which is spent on snowplough operations. The State’s geography ranges from desert to mountains and Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) has a 500+ strong winter maintenance fleet to undertake snowploughing and spreading salt, salt brine, magnesium chloride a

TrafficLand video support and distribution services will expand availability to traffic video imagery for Texas commuters, media and public agencies. TrafficLand, US distributor of live traffic video, has reached an agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) for access to video images from the state’s traffic camera network. The agreement gives TrafficLand access to video images from more than 1,600 TxDOT traffic cameras located across Texas. TrafficLand will access the video through TxD

German motorists can look forward to receiving traffic information over a data channel with 400 times the capacity of traditional RDS-TMC services, thanks to a partnership between Mediamobile and TomTom on the first nationwide traffic service to be broadcast over Germany’s digital radio network, Mediamobile’s V-Traffic Premium DAB. TomTom will provide the traffic content for the V-Traffic service, which is regarded as important in establishing digital radio as a new traffic data delivery channel for the aut

A study of the impact of travel time information on driver behaviour has come to some interesting conclusions, as Dean Deeter of Athey Creek Consultants explains. For some time road operators have been using dynamic message signs (DMS) to keep drivers informed of current road conditions. While it is known that drivers welcome the additional information, little has been known about the effect this information has on driver behaviour - until now that is. A survey undertaken by ENTERPRISE (Evaluating New TEch