Features

As the road-building season gets under way in the US, the Federal Highway Administration has just published a White Paper which deals with the use of ITS technology in work zones. On 30 April 2009, the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) published a White Paper which was prepared by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) to inform public agencies about the use of ITS to manage construction work zones. This is a particularly relevant topic given the large number of construction projects that are ex

Car insurance made cheaper by telematics has returned to news headlines in the UK this year. Will it really take off this time and can vehicle tracking provide an effective tool for enforcing or encouraging insurance compliance? Jon Masters reports Will 2012 go down as the year that telematics-based car insurance took off? In the UK at least, a groundswell of new policies, with premiums priced on the basis of tracked and analysed driving style, suggests a turning point has been reached. Some would argue t

Iteris has been awarded a new contract to lead a team working to update and support the United States’ National ITS Architecture. Pete Goldin reports on this latest initiative to help all US agencies’ development and application of ITS systems The United States Department of Transportation has a set of standards safeguarded for ITS for the US, with a vision for the future of transportation technology called the National ITS Architecture. This may sound like a secret plan kept in a vault somewhere, but the

Coming soon to a screen near you: Brady O. Bruce and John Stark of Jupiter Systems discuss trends in control room technologies. Perhaps the single most important trend in the control room environment over the last 12-18 months has been the accelerated move towards the adoption of flat-screen Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology. Having made their presence felt in the home environment, where they continue to replace outdated cathode ray tube-based technology, LCDs have reached the point where their perfor

The continued expansion of IP camera networks increases the availability of useful information. At the same time, the opportunity exists to increase inter-agency collaboration. This makes information management all the more necessary in the control room environment. But the transportation sector could do a lot to help itself by gaining a better idea up front of what and how it wants to do things, says Electrosonic's Karl Johnson.

The first section of a planned network of stations for charging electric vehicles – the West Coast Electric Highway – opened in March, promising a welcome boost to the environment and economy of Oregon. Pete Goldin reports What should come first, the electric vehicle or the charging station? This dilemma has been hindering proliferation of ‘EVs’ in the US for years. Without a widespread and reliable infrastructure of charging stations, the American public is not likely to adopt EVs en masse. This may all b

OmniAir's Tim McGuckin takes a look at what happens when a tolling authority makes safety its principal operating criterion. The bottom - line effects, he says, are not as onerous as one might think. Replacing an existing 915MHz-based Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) system with a new 915MHz system for toll collection is - from a technology standpoint - comparable to trading in your 1999 high-mileage Buick for another 1999 Buick with '0' on the odometer.

It is now 20 years since publication of the Strategic Plan for Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems. A select group of luminary figures of the ITS industry give their assessment of progress to date This year the IVHS Strategic Plan turns 20, signaling the graduation of the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems from its tumultuous teens to young adulthood. After two decades tethered by the cords of youth and protected by the strict control of adult institutions, ITS has reached a turning point. Its y

It is now 20 years since publication of the Strategic Plan for Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems. A select group of luminary figures of the ITS industry give their assessment of progress to date This year the IVHS Strategic Plan turns 20, signaling the graduation of the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems from its tumultuous teens to young adulthood. After two decades tethered by the cords of youth and protected by the strict control of adult institutions, ITS has reached a turning point. Its y

It is now 20 years since publication of the Strategic Plan for Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems. A select group of luminary figures of the ITS industry give their assessment of progress to date This year the IVHS Strategic Plan turns 20, signaling the graduation of the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems from its tumultuous teens to young adulthood. After two decades tethered by the cords of youth and protected by the strict control of adult institutions, ITS has reached a turning point. Its y

Kallistratos Dionelis, General Secretary of ASECAP, makes the case for a lightly regulated, staged progression towards a pan-European cooperative infrastructure environment, the achievement of which should look to engender cooperation between the public and private sectors. Such an approach, he says, is the only real path to success.

Traffic management centres (TMC) have traditionally served to provide surveillance and responses to traffic incidents and recurring and non-recurring changes in road networks. Typically, a TMC collected field data from the roadway and transit infrastructure and provided the integration necessary for operators to see what was happening and then coordinate a response. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) guided operators on how to respond to a given situation. It eventually became impractical for TMC operat

The North Carolina Turnpike Authority's JJ Eden talks about developments within the Alliance for Toll Interoperability. The Alliance for Toll Interoperability grew out of the US State of North Carolina's moves to introduce modern, Open Road Tolling (ORT) and the identification of revenue 'holes' when it came to out-of-state customers. Initially, the Alliance looked to achieve some form of common ground when it came to the use of transponders used by different agencies but alighted on video-based tolling as

Dave Marples of Technolution argues that the continuing development of tolling-specific onboard equipment is leading us up a blind alley. We should, he says, be looking to realise universal platforms with universal application. The near-future automobile contains information systems of a sophistication to rival a jet airliner of only a few years ago, yet is 'piloted' by a considerably less well-trained individual of highly variable mental and physical capacity, and operated in a hostile, unpredictable and p

The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) is pioneering fresh approaches to Electronic Fee Collection (EFC) deployment in the US. Its new system, operational since January 2009 on all buses and commuter trains, is the country's first full-network rollout of transit e-ticketing technology built on an open-payment network, according to the organisation's Technology Programme Development Manager Craig Roberts.