Location Based Systems

According to the 2012 Congestion Index from satellite navigation specialists TomTom, motorists in Bristol and Belfast now face the slowest moving traffic in Britain. Even London’s infamous rush hour is less congested than peak-time jams in cities like Manchester and Nottingham, the annual global traffic figures found. The index shows that the average journey for drivers in Belfast takes 32.1 per cent longer than it would do if traffic moved freely, while in Bristol, journeys take 31 per cent longer. Londo

Pitt Ohio, a transportation solutions provider headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, can now more proactively plan its business by creating routes, managing complex schedules, and monitoring progress throughout the day. The company has licensed Esri's ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics solution, powered by the ArcGIS platform. Pitt Ohio is a member of the Reliance Network, a group of regional carriers that work together to provide seamless service for customers. The company provides less-than-trucklo

OnTheMove, a free, customisable travel information service launched by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) is designed to provide travellers with email alerts prior to their journey, about road and driving conditions, incidents and road works on New Zealand’s state highways. NZTA Regional Traffic Operations Manager Kathryn Musgrave says the new service is a customer-friendly way for road users to check road conditions before they travel on our state highways. OnTheMove can be accessed from any PC or sma

By tracking moving objects, a new system from Volvo could help prevent accidents. The system uses a camera embedded in a car’s rear view mirror, combined with a radar instrument in the grill to scan the road ahead. If it sees an object, an onboard computer will determine whether it is a cyclist or a pedestrian, and prepare to apply the brakes if someone swerves out into traffic or darts across road. Many cars already come with safety systems that will brake if a collision with another vehicle or a pedestria

TomTom has expanded the functionalities of its connected car technology and extended the integration possibilities for its fleet management solution to help companies manage their mobile operations more efficiently. TomTom Business Solutions is allowing third-party developers to create new applications for use in and around the vehicle. This has been enabled by granting access to the Bluetooth channel on its in-vehicle Link device. TomTom’s open API on both its hardware and software enables technology partn

By integrating the company’s ROVR tracking system into its TransSuite advanced traffic management system (ATMS), TransCore brings the ease of fleet vehicle tracking to departments of transportation (DOT), enabling them to efficiently manage their construction, maintenance, snow ploughs, and safety vehicles in real time, easily identifying their location in the TransSuite ATMS map application and responding faster to roadway incidents. Additional GPS data can provide vehicle information for travel time calcu

The UK’s Automobile Association (the AA) has licensed TomTom’s HD traffic data to power its new AA Roadwatch Pro traffic app, which it has been launched to alert users to congestion on their planned routes. Using TomTom’s real time traffic services, the app provides subscribers with a text alert if there are traffic delays on their planned journey before they leave. Users can then decide on an alternative route if necessary, to give them the best chance to arrive at their destination on time. The app also p

International Road Dynamics (IRD) will take advantage of the 2013 APWA North American Snow Conference to demonstrate FleetSphere telematics, its web-based GPS telematics system with additional features specifically designed for snowplough fleet management. The solution enables fleet managers to manage the spreading and ploughing work being done on an entire road network. FleetSphere will interface with all available components installed on a snowplough, including plough blades, spreader, blast, pre-wet, and

The US Department of Transportation (USDOT)’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Joint Program Office is offering a connected vehicle 101 workshop at ITS America’s 23rd Annual Meeting and Exposition on April 21, 2013, in Nashville, Tennessee. This three-hour workshop will describe the connected vehicle concept and provide the status of USDOT’s connected vehicle research program. The connected vehicle concept leverages the potentially transformative capabilities of wireless technology to enable communi

Telogis and Volvo Trucks in North America have entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to develop services that leverage the comprehensive cloud-based Telogis location intelligence platform including telematics, dynamic routing, real-time work order management, commercial navigation and mobile integration services for companies with mobile workforces. “The development of future fleet management services through this MOA will give our customers access to an industry-leading location intelligence solutio