Features

As red light enforcement is returning to some intersections and being shut down at others, new evidence has been released backing the safety campaigners, reports Jon Masters. In 2014, 709 Americans were killed in red-light-running crashes and an estimated 126,000 were injured according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Caltrans’ Malcolm Dougherty took time out of his schedule at ITS America 2016 in San Jose to talk to ITS International about current and future challenges. As director of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) since mid-2012, many would say that Malcolm Dougherty has one of the best jobs in transportation. Caltrans is one of the most progressive and innovative transport authorities, implementing policies to encourage cycling, piloting new

Professor Donald Fisher has spent 15 years identifying factors that increase the crash risk of novice and older drivers. His findings highlight the difference between living and dying, Colin Sowman reports.

Richard Harris from Xerox considers how to alleviate inner-city traffic congestion. Whether travelling for business or leisure, wasting unnecessary time during your journey is a common source of frustration. From dealing with congestion, hold-ups caused by broken down vehicles or crashes to roadworks and other types of delay, wasting time is almost guaranteed to make most people experience additional stress before they even get to where they want to go.

Andrew Bardin Williams looks at state-run schemes to encourage green transportation habits with raffles, gift cards, competitions and frequent traveller points. The societal benefits of green transportation are obvious: less congestion, cleaner air and healthy economy. Equally the advantages for individuals are pretty clear too: a healthy lifestyle, freedom of movement and the feeling of being a part of something greater than oneself.

Bus travel booking is moving into the digital age as David Crawford discovers. A global surge in demand for intercity bus travel is fuelling new initiatives to make it easier for passengers to access information and book via the web by, fo example, using multi-sourced metasearch engines

New report highlights how assessing the financial benefit of deploying ITS is an involved and evolving calculation Following a global search, five key action areas have emerged from the New Zealand Transport Agency’s recent scoping of a more comprehensive cost–benefit analysis framework for evaluating planned ITS deployments. A report commissioned from engineering consultancy Aecom New Zealand sets out the groundwork for more closely-defined assessments that will convincingly support public-sector policy ma

Brazil’s incident-prone Regis Bittencourt Highway was once known as ‘the highway of death’ but investment in ITS systems has brought about some big improvements, as Mauro Nogarin discovers Between 2010 and the end of 2014, Brazil made major investments in traffic technology across its national highways with the result that the ITS network went from 4,963km of fibre optics to 8,524km and the number of cameras increased from 1,127 to 3,208.

The EU-co-funded I_ HeERO (Infrastructure_ Harmonised eCall European Pilot) project is working to ensure the readiness of national networks of call centres - known as public safety answering posts (PSAPs) - to deal with automated crash alerts arriving via the continent-wide 112 emergency phone number. Following on from its HeERO and HeERO2 pre-deployment predecessors, which enjoyed €16m (US$17.76m) in EU funding, the new initiative runs from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2017. It has €30.9 million (US$34.

Timothy Compston considers the challenges faced by the operators of the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden, the largest structure of its kind across Europe. In light of the concerns about the ongoing security threat and the unprecedented flow of migrants, many of the countries that make up the Schengen Area in Europe have re-introduced border controls. For its part, Sweden has rolled out ID checks for train, bus and ferry passengers from Denmark placing the landmark Øresund Bridge very much on the fr

Buses can play a key role in the battle to improve air quality in towns and cities as David Crawford discovers. A city with a population of half a million would gain about US$12.3 million in annualised societal savings if all its buses ran on electricity instead of diesel. This is the conclusion of a wide-ranging analysis carried out by Swedish bus manufacturer Volvo Group and global business consultants KPMG.

Mauro Nogarin looks at the management of the longer tunnels on Mexico’s Durango-Mazatlan highway. In recent years the National Infrastructure Fund of Mexico has increased investment in the installation of ITS systems on selected highways to increase road safety. One such major investment is the 230km long Durango-Mazatlan highway which is 12m in width and has an average speed of 110km/h.

Vaisala’s Dr Kevin Petty explains why the weather will continue to play a big part in road safety and traffic management in the smart cities of the future. The world is becoming increasingly connected. Thanks to advances in information and communications technology, the cities we live in are becoming ‘smart’, with everything from education to law enforcement managed by integrated tech solutions in a bid to improve quality of life.

ITS Germany used its presence at the June 2016 Europe ITS Congress in Glasgow to make two major announcements from the city of Hamburg, country’s second-largest urban area. First came a formal bid to host the 2021 ITS World Congress; second, the global unveiling of new Roadwork Administration and Decision System (ROADS) software.ROADS has emerged to enable coordination of planned transport construction projects several years before start dates, to minimise impacts on traffic flows when work begins.

Having authored HERMES, a major study for the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communication, Josef Czako talks to ITS International about his findings and lessons for other authorities. When CEOs of major automakers are predicting more change in the next five years than in the past 50, what is the role of national authorities considering the benefits of innovations in ITS?