Location Based Systems

The French court of Auditors has found that the European satellite navigation programmes, Galileo and EGNOS (the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service), the European satellite navigation programmes, will cost the EU more than US$14 billion over the period 1994-2020, says Euractiv. The delayed projects were originally allocated a budget of US$5 billion, according to the auditors. Galileo will cost a total of US$11 billion. Half of this amount had already been spent by the end of 2013. The C

Mapping and location technology provider Here is to provide traffic software specialists VIA with historical and current traffic data that will enable VIA to enhance the quality of services it provides to government customers. Under a commercial agreement between the two companies, Netherlands-based VIA will utilise Here’s Traffic Analytics, a service that helps enterprises and government customers make informed decisions about future traffic flow management. Traffic Analytics offers access to a vast qua

Trafficware has released version 2.4 of its market-leading central traffic management system ATMS.now, an advanced traffic management system (ATMS), used by hundreds of state and local Departments of Transportation around the US. New capabilities in the latest release include: Enhancements to both Google and Bing maps editor screens; A new reporting engine to optimise report generation; Centralised control of documents to be delivered to ATMS users; Performance improvements to increase response times in

The MOVE_UK project, recently announced by the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, is a consortium of companies that will help position the UK as a world leader in automated and self-driving cars. Led by Bosch, the MOVE_UK project benefits from a US$8 million grant awarded by InnovateUK and will see driverless technology trialled in real world conditions on roads in Greenwich, London. Project partners include Bosch, the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (T

The Mayor of London and Transport for London (TfL) have launched a world-leading programme to drive major improvements in safety across London's bus network, creating a six-point programme to reduce collisions and improve safety. The programme will bring together the newest technology, training, incentives, support, reporting and transparency right across the network, contributing to TfL's work towards meeting the mayor's target of halving the number of people killed or seriously injured on the capital's

The new i-Motors project, led by academics from the University of Nottingham’s Geospatial Institute and Human Factors Research Group and digital technology company Control F1, aims to build a mobile platform that allows vehicles of different manufacturers and origins to transfer and store data. The project, which has received a US$1.9 million award from the UK’s innovation agency Innovate UK sets out to establish a set of universal standards on how vehicles communicate with each other, and with other ma

A new film from the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) makes the case for making intelligent speed assistance (ISA) which can be overridden a standard feature on all new vehicles in Europe. The five-minute video has been launched as the European Commission continues work on the development of the next generation of vehicle safety standards, expected to be launched later this year. A major study for the Commission published last year by consultants TRL found that ISA is one of several new vehicl

A recent report by US Volpe experts identifies eleven emerging technologies and innovative applications that may have significant impacts on our transportation systems within three to five years. The report, 2015 OST-R Transportation Technology Scan: A Look Ahead, identifies technological advances and innovative concepts, along with their associated benefits, challenges and risks that could fundamentally alter the transportation landscape:

Vehicles equipped with front crash prevention are much less likely to rear-end other vehicles, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has found in the first study of the feature's effectiveness using US police-reported crash data. The study found that systems with automatic braking reduce rear-end crashes by about 40 per cent on average, while forward collision warning alone cuts them by 23 per cent. The automatic braking systems also greatly reduce injury crashes.

British companies Westfield Sportscars, Heathrow Enterprises and Oxbotica have joined the GATEway (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment) project in Greenwich and are currently developing driverless shuttles for operation in Greenwich in summer 2016. Using entirely British engineering and software capabilities, the new consortium members will be developing the existing UltraPods currently in service at Heathrow Airport into fully autonomous and electric passenger shuttles. Operating at Terminal 5 for ne