Features

Mobility services are a potential gold mine for data-hungry tech companies. That being the case, Andrew Bunn asks: what exactly happens when giants such as Google and Amazon decide to get their teeth into MaaS? There are many different perspectives on Mobility as a Service (MaaS), with many different views on what the latest and future applications of technology are going to bring to transportation infrastructure. However, there is one question that does not seem to come up at all. Up to now, MaaS-relate

Panasonic is at the heart of a C-V2X project which began last year in Colorado. The company’s smart mobility boss Chris Armstrong tells Adam Hill how it is working out Colorado needs traffic and transport solutions – and fast. The US state’s population has grown 50% in the last 20 years and another 50% hike is predicted in the next 20. It also spends more than $13 billion in roadway crash costs each year. In 2015, 546 people died in traffic-related crashes, and more than 3,000 were seriously injured.

Public transit is a huge component of US transportation, insists Mary Scott Nabers, CEO of Strategic Partnerships – and infrastructure upgrades have the potential to create thousands of jobs When it comes to public transportation, the US lags far behind other countries. Governments in Europe, Asia and Canada invest heavily in public transportation because it is viewed as an essential public good. The US government, however, views public transit a little differently and funding has been inadequate for d

Electric vehicles are widely expected to play a major role in the smarter, cleaner cities of the future. Paul Sernia explains why – and looks at the place of ultra-rapid chargers as part of a versatile public infrastructure Electric vehicles (EVs) are widely expected to play a major role in the smarter, cleaner cities of the future. With no dirty tailpipe, EVs can help improve the polluted air of inner cities. And when deployed as widely shared assets – through car clubs, ride-sharing services and taxi

Taking the pressure off cities’ road networks can have a beneficial effect on the environment. David Crawford looks at a new economic model which seeks to quantify the societal effect of freight traffic in Southampton, one of the UK’s five most polluted cities Cuts of 60% or more in volumes of freight deliveries are being predicted - along with badly-needed improvements in air quality - from a load consolidation scheme currently being introduced in the UK port city of Southampton. The forecasts are based o

Just a few years ago, terms such as ‘embedded’ and ‘polarisation’ were buzzwords. But now they are real and present examples of vision technology in action – and, Adam Hill finds, the ITS industry is waking up to a number of possible applications Every aspect of the intelligent transportation systems industry moves quickly – but developments in camera technology change with a rapidity which can appear quite bewildering. And with ITS providers constantly searching for an edge against fierce competitio

A bus-to-jobs project in Milwaukee provides a useful service for low-paid workers. A new report shows the economic impact of potential closure on local employers - and demonstrates the importance of public transit networks for disadvantaged communities The city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has a problem. Getting people into out-of-town districts for work is an engine of economic growth, but it costs money. The Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) bus routes 6 and 61 - also known as JobLines - provide acces

The rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence means that fortune tellers will soon be out of business. Ed Chavis takes a behind the scenes look at the world of predictive analytics ver since organisations started taking advantage of insights derived from Big Data, data scientists concentrated their efforts on the ability to make correct assumptions about the future. A few years later, with the help of automation, developments in machine learning (ML) and advancements in the application of a

For all the talk of smart cities, investment in systems lags significantly behind organic expansion in most places. Andrew Stone talks to Venkat Sumantran, who has been looking at how to create a coherent framework which could help authorities answer multiple mobility questions Two megatrends are posing unprecedented challenges to those trying to keep people moving around the world’s urban areas now - and in the years and decades to come. The first is rapid urbanisation. One in six of us lived in urban a

Julián Núñez, immediate past president of ASECAP, gets his teeth into the vision of a European strategy for toll roads. David Arminas reports from Madrid. Getting European politicians to agree to a long-term cross-border highway infrastructure programme for toll roads is extremely difficult. It’s a bit like pulling teeth: people want to avoid the pain. But pain is something that Spanish operators, including Abertis, OHL, ACS, FCC and Acciona, have been going through for the past decade. The country has

As security threats become increasingly vast and varied, multinationals are beginning to see the need for an effective global security operations centre to protect their organisation. James I. Chong spells out what is required. You know you need a global security operations centre (GSOC) to support what you’ve built, identify threats, and prevent disasters before they happen - but how do you know if it’s truly effective? There’s no shortage of information coming into operation centres. Too often, it’s the

RTS in Rochester, New York, saves by working with Conduent to upgrade its CAD/AVL systems rather than ripping them up and replacing them. Andrew Bardin Williams hops on for a ride. What to do, what to do?” It’s a question every transportation official must ask when faced with legacy assets, equipment and software that are nearing the end of their useful life. Nothing lasts forever, right? Freeways need to be repaired, bridges replaced, traffic management software updated and railway cars turned into

Traffic can be a really big challenge. When you’re stuck, you’re stuck. Everything comes to a standstill. But Alexander Lewald describes how existing infrastructures can be used more efficiently and how demand can be managed. A few figures to start with: in Los Angeles, the average driver spends 102 hours a year in traffic – that’s more than four days. This figure is 91 hours in Moscow and New York, 74 in London, 69 in Paris, 51 hours in Munich and still 40 hours in Vienna. Traffic is what causes

What started five years ago as a mobile ticketing app is evolving towards a full MaaS offering for the US city of Dallas, Texas. Colin Sowman finds out why and how. When it was launched in September 2013, GoPass was the first multimodal, multi-agency transit fare payment app in the US. Introduced by the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (Dart), GoPass combines a mobile ticketing app with a trip planning function and it is also accepted by Trinity Railway Express, Trinity Metro and the Denton County Transportation

After six years of intensive research, testing and negotiation, the US tolling industry is well on its way to groundbreaking results in the effort to establish regional - and eventually national - toll interoperability, says IBTTA’s Bill Cramer. Interoperability has been a high priority on the US tolling industry’s agenda for more than a decade. But several factors made it a uniquely complex issue to resolve - including the number of agencies involved, the significant investments those agencies had already