Features

Hitting an animal on a rural road can be fatal for all parties involved – but detecting and avoiding them requires clever technology. Andrew Williams carefully scans the horizon for details. Wildlife-vehicle collisions are an ever-present threat in rural areas around the world, and there is certainly nothing funny about suddenly finding an angry moose in your headlights on a sharp bend. A variety of detection and avoidance systems are currently in use or under development to help prevent your vehicle being

Keeping the public safe in a changing world requires smart thinking and sensible deployment of technology. Peter Jones of Hitachi Europe examines some available options From human threats, such as terrorism, to digital threats like hacking, the growing sophistication of crime is posing serious challenges to public safety. At the same time, mass urbanisation threatens to exacerbate these problems as there are more people to keep safe. According to a new whitepaper from Hitachi and Frost & Sullivan, Public

When Atlanta’s streetcar project had some issues, Siemens helped to solve them – but started out by just listening, says Chris Maynard, the company’s head of rail services. It’s funny how often niggling problems can be a warning sign that there are bigger issues requiring attention – and not so funny how things can escalate if you don’t pay attention to them. With that in mind, Siemens was hired as service provider for the Atlanta Streetcar system - four vehicles operating on a two-mile loop in downtown

Travellers want to be able to book multimodal journeys easily – and to be informed of problems and alternatives as they go. Adam Roark might just be able to help, finds Ben Spencer. The global shift in transportation towards members of the public wanting access to multimodal journeys is rapidly changing how people pay and plan ahead. Buying tickets from a machine and dealing with the frustration of discovering your train is cancelled is a scenario commuters want to avoid through technology’s ability to

There is some controversy over the testing of connected and autonomous vehicles – but Robert Deans of Transurban North America explains how managed lanes could be vital in the development of CAVs, benefiting everyone. Managed lane operators have the opportunity to establish themselves as leaders in the testing and roll-out of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), assisting and accelerating the transition of CAVs onto road networks to deliver economic and safety benefits. Managed lane facilities

A spat has broken out between two major US transportation organisations over how best to pay for road use: the ATA says tolls are ‘fake funding’ while IBTTA has scorned ‘scare tactics and falsehoods’… Much has been made of the state of US roads: everyone agrees that funding is needed – but who should pay? And how? Chris Spear, president and CEO of American Trucking Associationsm(ATA), believes finance is facing a cliff edge: the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), historically the primary source of federal revenue

A key US vote may have changed what internet service providers are allowed to charge and how they restrict content: Joe Dysart explains why this has consequences for ITS companies. While most people were rushing around last December, grabbing last-minute gifts for the holidays, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to drive a stake into the heart of the free and open internet. In a majority vote, the agency killed ‘net neutrality’ - a policy that has prevented your regional internet service

US Cities The need to connect existing infrastructure has led various US transit authorities into imaginative alleyways: David Crawford examines some new roles for street furniture. US cities are vying with each other in developing schemes to create a new generation of connected places. Their strategies include taking advantage of their streetlight poles’ height and ubiquity to give them new roles in supporting intelligent nodes. They are now being equipped for collecting real-time data on key transport

As cycling becomes an increasingly popular method for commuting and recreation, what moves are afoot to keep the growing numbers of cyclists safe on ever-more-busy roads? Alan Dron puts on his helmet and pedals off to look. It would have seemed incredible just a decade ago, but cycling in London has become almost unfeasibly popular. The Transport for London (TfL) June 2017 Strategic Cycling Analysis document noted there were now 670,000 cycle trips a day in the UK capital, an increase of 130% since 2000.

There is far more to working out the worth of a project than simply filling in a few headings on a spreadsheet. David Crawford surveys some recent thinking from the US and Canada. Cost benefit analysis (CBA) “can’t be carried out with a cookbook”, warns US analyst Professor Robert J Brent. “ You can’t just get out a spreadsheet and fill in the data for all the headings. Each transport CBA should have something that is distinctive, in terms of location (for example, for a rural area), types of user

We pay for roads through our taxes: the poor pay proportionately more, and effectively subsidise the rich. It would be fairer to accept the ‘user pays’ principle, says Dr John Walker. Road pricing is already used worldwide to combat congestion and pollution, to compensate for falling revenues from fuel duty (‘gas tax’), to provide an alternative (and fairer) means of charging motorists than the 80-year old fuel tax and to improve the efficiency of and expand transport infrastructure. However, it could and s

In Paris, RATP Group’s autonomous Metro Line 1 is carrying 750,000 people a day across the city. Ben Spencer is invited into the control room to take a look at how the system works Paris is visited by millions of tourists each year, keen to see for themselves stunning attractions such as the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Seine and all the rest. But while the best-known sites of the City of Light tend to be on the surface, there is a lot going on below those iconic grand boule

US president Donald Trump’s comments about the country’s ‘crumbling infrastructure’ led many in the ITS sector to spot an opportunity to help with other solutions. David Seaton of Fluor ponders the scale of what’s required and considers some projects which have boosted mobility We can no longer wait for future generations to address this nation’s crumbling infrastructure. We need to act now. The problem is substantial, to say the least. The American Society of Civil Engineers predicts that failing to clo

A shared vision - or even much of a conversation at all - about what a better mobility balance looks like has been lacking…until now. Andrew Stone speaks to Zipcar founder Robin Chase about fairness – and the importance of not demonising cars

Singapore has the third-highest population density in the world and the numbers are continuing to grow. The government knows that transit is vital: David Crawford investigates the city state’s Smart Nation strategy. Transport is the most important of the five domains identified as the pillars of Singapore's far-reaching Smart Nation strategy, launched in November 2014 by prime minister Lee Hsien Loong with the aim of reaching fulfilment by 2024. Roads account for 12% of the island republic's 719km2 land ar