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Features

November 20, 2013
Automated enforcement tames speeders in Chicago’s Children’s Safety Zones
Chicago is installing automated enforcement after pilot schemes indicated that one in 10 motorists exceed the speed limits in Children’s Safety Zones. Each year in Chicago there are around 3,000 incidents of pedestrians being struck by a motor vehicle - and about 800 of those casualties are children. In an effort to improve child safety the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) has established Children’s Safety Zones around schools and other areas where children congregate. These zones allow the impos
November 19, 2013
Q&A: Oberthur Technologies
Didier Lamouche, Chief Executive Officer of Oberthur Technologies (OT), tells CARTES Daily News how his company is helping customers – and what he is looking forward to seeing at CARTES this week
November 19, 2013
Q&A: Giesecke & Devrient
xel Deininger, Group Senior Vice President and Head of the Secure Devices division at Giesecke & Devrient, explains what his company is offering potential customers at CARTES this week – and why the industry is facing a renewed need for standardisation
November 15, 2013
Maintaining momentum: learning lessons from the London Olympics
Japan will not only host this year’s ITS World Congress but has been selected for the 2020 Olympics. So what can Japan, and indeed Brazil, learn from the traffic management for London 2012 - Geoff Hadwick finds out. It was a key moment when Olympic boss Jacques Rogge signed off London 2012, calling the Games “happy and glorious.” Scarred by the logistical disaster of Atlanta 1996 and the last-minute building panic for Athens 2008, Rogge clearly thought London 2012 was an object lesson in how to plan and
November 7, 2013
Smart Spanish city trials cell-based traffic management
David Crawford reports on an urban electronic nervous system. The northern Spanish city of Santander – historically a port - is now an emerging technology showcase attracting global attention as a prototype for a medium-sized smart city of the future. In a move to determine the optimal use of available data, it is creating a de-facto experimental laboratory for sensor and mobile phone-based urban traffic management and environmental monitoring innovations.
November 7, 2013
Bit by bit insurers agree data protocol
Telematics technology may be a game changer for the automobile insurance industry but it comes with some caveats as Colin Sowman discovers. James Bielak, (P&C) program manager at the US office of ACORD (the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development), has an unenviable job: to devise a standard form of communicating vehicle data between telematics providers and insurance companies. To that end he has gathered together a group composed of insurers, telematics providers and other intere
November 7, 2013
Tech combo used to target overweight vehicles
UK enforcement agency VOSA is using a combination of ANPR and weigh-in-motion technology to detect and target overweight trucks on some of the busiest motorways. Overloaded vehicles pose a potential danger to drivers, other road users and pedestrians.
October 22, 2013
Is driver information heading for multi-channel mayhem
Colin Sowman talks to TRL’s research director Dr Alan Stevens about the future for cash-strapped road authorities’ driver information systems.
October 18, 2013
Savings accrue from on-line from truck screening
An online truck pre-clearance system is allowing enforcement to be better targeted towards offending vehicles. Utah is the latest US State department of transportation (DOT) to deploy HELP (Heavy Vehicle Electronic License Plate) Inc’s new 360SmartView electronic truck screening and sorting system at vehicle inspection sites to speed up compliance checks. The initial locations will be at Perry on Interstate 15 (I-15), which were the first sites in the state to implement HELP’s PrePass transponder-based v
October 18, 2013
Enlarged transportation data highlights wider issues
Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Canada makes the case for enlarged and improved transport-related data. Comprehensive, high quality data is useful, or even essential, for many types of decision making and transport is no exception. Planners and researchers can cite countless situations where their understanding of transport problems and their ability to evaluate potential solutions is constrained by inadequate data.
October 18, 2013
Spot speed deterrent proved to be transient
As research and trials show the benefits of average speed enforcement - David Crawford reviews developments on two continents. August 2013 saw the switch on of the Australian State of Victoria’s latest combined point-to-point (P2P) average speed enforcement (ASE) and spot camera control system. Installed on the 27km Peninsula Link to the south-east of Melbourne, the system uses high-resolution automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and optical character recognition (OCR) technology developed b
October 7, 2013
Keeping over-height and overheating vehicles out of tunnels
A review of pre-warning solutions for problematic commercial vehicles approaching tunnels
October 7, 2013
ANPR shockwaves emanate from Royston ruling
Colin Sowman looks at how a ruling regarding ANPR cameras in a small English town could have wide-reaching implications. Superficially it was an easy decision: the local council and traders wanted, and were prepared to fund, automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras installed to deter crime in Royston, a small town (population 17,000) in rural England.
October 7, 2013
North Florida signals coordinated approach to congestion management
David Crawford investigates innovative congestion management in Florida. The largest US city by area is well into the implementation of an ambitious congestion management system (CMS) on the scale of those of higher-profile centres such as Seattle and San Francisco. Regional agency the North Florida Transportation Planning Organisation (NFTPO) aims to ensure that commuters on major highways in Jacksonville can rely on a minimum 72km/h (45mph) driving speed in normal conditions.
September 26, 2013
Felix Scheuter, of Haenni Instruments, on effective highway weight enforcement
Felix Scheuter, managing director at Haenni Instruments, the renowned Switzerland-based mobile scales manufacturer, gives World Highways his views on how best to ensure effective highway weight enforcement The main danger for any road is its gradual destruction by overloaded heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). The more frequently such vehicles use a highway, the faster it is destroyed. Mobile patrol teams using mobile weighing scales are a highly effective way to enforce weight limits aimed at protecting ro