Features

Asecap debates the future of tolling
August 23, 2016
Colin Sowman reports form Asecap’s Study & Information Days event in Madrid. At Asecap’s (the Association of European Toll Road Operators) recent Study and Information Days event there was no doubt about the subject at the top of the agenda: the European Union Directive 23/2014/EU. This will introduce fundamental changes to the concession model under which Asecap members operate more than 50,000km of tolled highways and, in response, it has compiled a report entitled Proposal for a Sustainable Concession Mo
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Xerox takes youthful view of future transport
August 23, 2016
Xerox’s David Cummins talks to Colin Sowman about the lessons for city authorities from its survey of younger peoples’ attitude to transport. There can be no better way to get a handle on the future of transport demand than to ask the younger generation about how they view and consume today’s transport. Sociologists have called this group Generation Z – those born between 1995 and 2007 – which will make up 40% of all US consumers by 2020.
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Cubic promotes the power of partnerships
August 22, 2016
Cubic’s Andy Taylor considers the growing need for partnerships in the transportation sector. At the end of June, The Guardian newspaper in the UK broke a game-changing transport story – Sidewalk Labs, a secretive subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is working on a project that aims to radically overhaul parking and transportation in American cities.
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Interoperability facilitates mobility on Santiago’s toll roads
August 10, 2016
Drivers crossing Chile’s capital are benefitting from additional investment in ITS. Mauro Nogarin reports. Santiago de Chile is pioneering the development of concession-interoperable, multi-lane, free-flow urban highways. This road network crosses the city from north to south (Autopista Central), from east to west (Costanera Norte) and also includes the north-western (Vespucio Norte) and southern (Vespucio Sur) ring roads surrounding this metropolitan area of seven million people.
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ITS South Africa sees a perfect storm as spending is squeezed
August 10, 2016
The argument for cost-benefit analysis of ITS has never been so strong, according to Dr Paul Vorster, CEO of ITS South Africa, as the industry finds itself “in the eye of a perfect storm. There are escalating demands for solutions to strategic challenges such as cutting congestion, and improving and expanding mobility by moving people out of private vehicles and into public and non-motorised transport.
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Calculating the cost of stellar solutions
August 10, 2016
The increasing availability and accuracy of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is opening up low-cost options in many areas as David Crawford finds out. Boosting commercialisation of European global navigation satellite system (EGNSS) technologies for ITS initially depends heavily on demonstrating competitive and cost/benefit advantages obtainable from the deployment of EGNOS (the current European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), and ultimately the EU’s Galileo constellation (see box). So,
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August 10, 2016
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August 10, 2016
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Mileage based charging offers secure future for funding
August 10, 2016
HNTB’s Matthew Click sets out why a move to mileage-based pricing is inevitable. Infrastructure is the most neglected yet the most critical engine of our society, and our continued indifference could lead to a dystopian future. Our roads, bridges and highways have been largely passed by in the digital age—marginalised in an era when funding is limited and stewardship of physical assets has given way to our preoccupation with technological innovation and data—the stuff of the virtual realm.
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ITS International launches MaaS Market Conference
August 10, 2016
ITS International is to host its first conference for national and city authorities interested in the benefits and implementation of Mobility as a Service (MaaS). There is no doubt that Mobility as a Service (MaaS) will be a major disrupter and the next mega-trend in urban and inter-urban transport. Why? Because it is more convenient and cheaper for the individual traveller.
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Hartford’s tailors winter maintenance on Esri’s GIS platform
August 5, 2016
The in-house winter maintenance and vehicle tracking system built by the Public Works Department in Hartford, Connecticut, coped with record snowfalls and cut costs too. When it comes to dealing with the effects of mother nature, transport agencies can find themselves in a lose-lose situation: criticised if the roads or rail lines are disrupted by snow, ice or floods for more than a few hours and lambasted for wasting money if the equipment and stockpiles put in place for a hard winter remain unused.
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IR’s invisible benefit for traffic surveillance and enforcement
June 30, 2016
Advances in vision technology are enhancing traffic surveillance and enforcement applications. Variable lighting conditions have long been a stumbling block for vision technology applications in the transport sector. With applications such as ANPR, the read-rate may vary between daylight and night and can be adversely affected by glare and low sun. Madrid, Spain-based Lector Vision had these considerations in mind when designing its Traffic Eye ANPR system, which combines off-the-shelf and custom hardware
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Machine vision’s transport offerings move on apace
June 30, 2016
Colin Sowman considers some of the latest advances in camera technology and transport-related vision technology applications. Vision technology in the transportation sector is moving apace as technical developments on both the hardware and software sides combine to make cameras more multifunctional with a single digital camera now able to cover a multitude of tasks.
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Sony helps Rio get a better view of the Olympics
June 29, 2016
With the Olympics approaching, Sony’s Stephane Clauss examines how the latest camera technologies can help cities cope with the huge crowds attending major events. This August will see more than 10,000 athletes head to Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics Games. Alongside them will be their coaching staff, a hoard of logistics teams, thousands of volunteer marshals (London 2012 had 70,000) and millions of spectators. All such major events have nervous jitters on the way to the opening ceremony. This year has see
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Are truck bans the wrong move in the battle for air quality
June 29, 2016
Low emission zones and heavy goods vehicles’ access to city centres may at first glance appear attractive but how effective are such controls? Jon Masters reviews emerging trends across Europe. Around 1,700 European cities have implemented low emission zones (LEZs) and in addition some have restricted city centre access for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). Even those that restrict HGV access, such as Paris and Rome, allow exemptions at certain times and for particular classes of vehicle. But with what effect?
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