Features

A combination of technologies is leading to major congestion and cost reductions during roadworks on the UK’s motorway network. Innovative construction programme scheduling technology and the deployment of moveable barriers has achieved substantial savings of money and time on UK motorway roadworks managed by the Highways Agency (HA). This combination has set the scene for a new generation of road usage analysis tools. The HA’s objective was to reduce the congestion caused by lane closures during roa

A fledgling advanced lane management assist system can take the guesswork out of selecting the right lane on a congested freeway, as its inventor Robert Gordon explains. As drivers we’ve all done it and control room staff see it all the time – motorists on congested freeways switching into what they perceive is a faster lane, only to come to a halt a few moments later and watch vehicles in the other lanes continue to move past. Now, by re-analysing readily available data in an advanced lane management as

The US automated enforcement market is in rude health as the number of systems and applications continues to grow and broaden. Jason Barnes reports. Blessed and cursed – arguably, in equal measure – with a constitution which stresses the right to self-expression and determination, the US has had a harder journey than most to the more widespread use of automated traffic enforcement systems. In some cases, opposition to the concept has been extreme – including the murder of a roadside civil enforcement offici

The ‘value of time’ concept can be a vital decider in prioritising transport projects, as Lorenzo Casullo and Serbjeet Kohli of Steer Davies Gleave explain. How much do travellers value their time and how much would they be willing to pay for a better and faster transport option? For many years Steer Davies Gleave (SDG) has been collecting this type of information from thousands of people across the world as it researches travellers’ behaviour. And given the importance of this parameter for transport mo

David Crawford finds resurgent interest in travel information screens for buildings. With city governments worldwide increasingly opening up and sharing their public transport data for general use, attention is focusing on the potential financial benefits – to transit operators and businesses more widely. Professor Stephen Goldsmith, who directs the US’ Harvard University’s Data-Smart City Solutions Project says: “Amid nationwide public-sector budget cuts, open data is providing a road map for improving tra

A remote diagnostic system for variable message signs keeps Caltrans staff safer and makes them more efficient. District 12 of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintains roads in Orange County including 292 route miles of freeway lanes and 240 directional miles of full-time high occupancy vehicle or carpool lanes. All of these lanes are controlled from the district’s transportation management centre (TMC) using a network of 58 variable message signs (VMS) positioned alongside or abo

David Crawford examines the political and industrial background to the tolling technology debate. Saving the US State of California ‘millions of dollars’ in tolling infrastructure costs by encouraging new technologies is the professed aim of a legislative Bill, SB 242, which is currently moving through the State’s Senate (upper house) process. According to its sponsor, Republican State Senator Mark Wyland, permitting alternatives to the current FasTrak-branded radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based sys

David Crawford reports on energy cost cutting on US highways. Just over a year after switch-on and with two global awards under its belt, the longest solar-powered toll road in the US is generating heightened interest in highway applications of alternative energy. The E-407, which loops around the eastern perimeter of the Denver metropolitan area in Colorado, won the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) President’s Overall Award for Excellence at its September 2013 Annual Meeting in

Test story about nothing

Michael Marsico, Andrew Weeks, Keir Opie and Murat Ayçin explain the application of hybrid traffic simulation to a planning study in New York City. Traffic modelling, particularly mesoscopic-microscopic hybrid simulation, has played a key role in planning for the future of one of America's shortest interstates, the 1.3-mile Sheridan Expressway. New York City has just completed a two-year, interagency study federally funded by a TIGER II grant on how to improve the Sheridan Expressway and its surroundi

With Galileo’s early services scheduled to start next year, Fiammetta Diani is enthusiastic about the opportunities the EU’s GNSS system will offer. Next year will be a very exciting one for Galileo, the EU’s fledgling satellite constellation; additional satellites are scheduled for launch and, as European Commission Vice President Tajani recently announced, early operational services will be starting towards the end of 2014. So it really is ‘all systems go’ as Fiammetta Diani, market development officer in

Cubic latest introduction provides a short cut for transit authorities looking to offer travellers mobile, smart phone payment options. Transit operators wanting to provide travellers with a mobile fare payment option now have an ‘off-the-shelf’ solution in Cubic’s NextWave. Through the use of near field communications (NFC) technology, NextWave turns travellers’ mobile phones and tablets into the equivalent of a ticket vending machine able to instantly re-load contactless transit cards. It also enables the

Australian study quantifies the benefits of SCATS to the motorists, the environment and the economy. Opportunity weekday cost savings potential of some AUD16 million (US$15.2 million) has emerged from rigorous analysis of a one-day study of Australia’s Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System (SCATS) in operation. This represents 27% of the total cost of a real alternative semi-adaptive traffic control. The estimated indicative annual weekday-based value is AUD3,900 million (US$3,705 million) or 0.9% of t

David Crawford reviews developments in near field communications for mass transit payments. ‘A carefully-designed and well-implemented mobile near field communications (NFC) solutions can give passengers a compelling experience that will encourage them to make greater use of public transport.’ That was the confident conclusion of a recent joint White Paper drawn up by the International Association of Public Transport and the global mobile operators’ representative group GSMA.

Examination of Norway’s tolling companies finds much to praise, and some criticisms too, as Torill Eidsheim told delegates at the ASECAP conference. The cost of collecting tolls has a substantial effect on the profitability, or otherwise, of tolling companies and is within the company’s control to a far greater degree than, for instance, traffic volumes. And while it is easy to assume that all tolling companies incur similar collection costs, that is not always the case according to Torill Eidsheim, pres