Features

Jonathan Raper, managing director of the TransportAPI talks to Colin Sowman about the benefits open data can bring to the public transport sector. That the digital revolution would change the world, including transport, was never in doubt but the question has always been: how? Now, with the ‘Millennium Bug’ relegated to a question on quiz shows, the potential and challenges of digital technology are starting to take shape - and Jonathan Raper is in the vanguard. Raper is managing director of the open data t

Slovakia opted for a satellite-based tolling system and following last year’s enlargement it now has the European Union’s largest truck user charging system.

IBEC, the International Benefits, Evaluation and Costs working group for ITS, has a new secretariat in the ERTICO/ITS Europe offices in Brussels, with Paul Kompfner, ERTICO head of smart urban mobility, as secretary. An early priority is a more dynamic website, offering better communications channels for news and encouraging wider dialogue and collaboration.

Refurbishing old dynamic message signs can save money and increase technical capabilities as David Crawford discovers. Evidence is growing on both sides of the Atlantic of the scope for retrofitting old or technically out-of-date dynamic message signs (DMS) with new electronic equipment, to save on the costs of installing full-scale replacements. In the last four months of 2014, a number of US states progressed programmes that achieved savings of more than US$1.75 million (€1.56million).

Drivers in the Washington DC area are realising time savings following the opening of Express Lanes on the I-95 - and not only those paying to use the new facility. Washington is ranked as being the worst gridlocked city in the United States. Every day its drivers face an average commute time of 39.5 minutes and they waste an average of 67 hours every year just sitting in traffic. In a move to counter these problems, late last December new Express Lanes were opened along 46.6km (29 miles) of the I-95 betwee

Overlaying a geographic information system with data from a new surveying system is paying dividends for Utah DOT. While building new roads tramways, metros and bicycle paths or installing smart systems to control traffic is the high-profile end of transportation planning and management, ensuring existing infrastructure and systems are serviceable and working is arguably more important. After all, at any given point the existing infrastructure will always carry more vehicles than new.

Long-term roadworks pose particular problems for temporary surveillance installations. Converting the hard shoulder to a running lane, either full- or part-time, is the UK Highways Agency’s solution to ease motorway congestion. This is leading to a number of long-term projects where large stretches of the hard shoulder are closed off by temporary concrete barriers and during these roadwork programmes, temporary CCTV cameras are deployed to monitor and record vehicle traffic and workers.

The safety of workers during road closures and working alongside, or above, live lanes is becoming an automated process. Ten workers suffered major injuries while working on or near motorways and major A roads in England in 2013, and between 2009 and 2013 eight had been killed. It was against that background that the first commercial application Safelane, the automated traffic management system designed to detect work zone incursions, was carried out during the temporary closure of a motorway.

Signing the order to equip a new control room just 45 days before the city hosts a major sporting event is challenging - but some deadlines just cannot be moved. There is nothing like a deadline to concentrate minds and effort as Mitsubishi and the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte discovered in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup. Although municipal authorities had been considering a new command centre for years, it was the hosting of the World Cup last summer that provided the final impetus.

Dr Caitlin Cottrill, lecturer at the University of Aberdeen’s School of Geosciences, examines the impact of privacy legislation on the transportation sector. Growing reliance on big data, underscored by the increasing ubiquity of smart infrastructure and the ‘Internet of Things’, has profoundly impacted the regulatory environment experienced by transportation professionals. This is particularly the case in relation to the privacy of personally identifying information (PII). There has been increased attenti

Q-Free’s Marco Sinnema looks at how the commoditisation of high-quality vision-based solutions is widening their application. Machine vision technology’s entry into the ITS/traffic management sector has followed a classic top-down path. This is unsurprising given the extremely demanding performance criteria which are the standard in its market of origin, manufacturing processing. Very high image qualities combined with frame rates often in the hundreds per second range resulted in vision systems with capabi

The adaptation of machine vision to transport applications continues apace. That the machine vision industry is taking traffic installations seriously is evident by the amount of hardware and software products tailor-made for ITS applications that are now available on the market. A good example comes from US-based Gridsmart Technologies which has developed a single wire fisheye camera that provides a horizon to horizon view for use at intersections. Not only does the single camera replace four or more in a

Kapsch TrafficCom’s Christoph Amlacher explains that the key to successful Electronic Vehicle Registration is to consider a deployment in its entirety — including enforcement. Electronic Vehicle Registration (EVR) shares much in common with large-scale city congestion charging, in that its benefits are numerous and obvious, and it has been a topic of lively discussion for a decade and more. Despite such manifest advantages and widespread interest, this has failed to translate into numerous large-scale deplo

Shem Oirere looks at the beneficial effect of cargo tracking. The mandatory installation of electronic cargo tracking and security (ECTS) systems in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda has helped enhance revenue collection, enforce cargo handling requirements, improved the business environment of the respective countries’ trade routes and helped cargo hauliers cut costs. This is being spearheaded by the state-owned tax collection agencies and the improved custom duty collection has not only enabled a reduction of im

Single-camera bi-directional speed enforcement can reduce the cost of enforcing speeding on two-way roads without repositioning the camera. Truvelo has received UK type-approval for a simultaneous bi-directional (SBD) enforcement camera, the D-Cam P digital, which can capture speeding motorist both those travelling towards and away from the camera. It is also in the process of carrying out the first installations of the D-Cam P in the UK.