News

Electronic Transaction Consultants (ETC) has earned final system acceptance for a back-office toll collection system for the Harris County Toll Road Authority in Texas. ETC says its RiteHorizon system is a platform of modules designed to address the specific features of the tolling applications and auditability of entities that deal with financials and reconciliations. According to ETC, the platform can easily integrate with new modules and comes with features such as payment plan management, treasury m

Oxford University’s Dr. Rafael H. M. Pereira has won the International Transport Forum’s (ITF) 2019 Young Researcher of the Year Award.

SAE International, a mobility standards developer, has formed a consortium to develop a framework of best practices to support secure mobility data sharing. It says the consortium will develop standardised data definitions and metrics as well as best practices to ensure appropriate safeguards for geolocation and personal data shared between mobility operators and cities. SAE Industry Technologies Consortia (SAE ITC), an affiliate organisation specialising in bringing together public agencies and industr

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has suggested a merger with Renault which it believes would make the combined company a ‘world leader’ in new mobility technologies. The proposal stems from discussions between both companies to identify products and geographies in which they could collaborate. FCA says the case for combination is strengthened by the need to take bold decisions to capture opportunities such as connectivity, electrification and autonomous vehicles (AVs). The combined business is expected

Ultimate Visual Solutions (UVS) has appointed Pawel Religa as a representative in Central and Eastern Europe to sell its Lucidity wall controller and control software. Religa will be based in Poland, but will cover Russia and other key parts of the European mainland UVS, a traffic control room company, says Lucidity is aimed at clients who require a solution where full command and control components are not needed. The Lucidity Wall Manager provides the launching of sources by dragging and dropping tem

Grab has joined forces with Sinar Mas Land to launch 50 electric scooters aimed at people travelling short distances in BSD (Bumi Serpong Damai) City in Indonesia. Sinar, a property developer, says the GrabWheels service is expected to be of interest to students and office workers travelling distances of 3-5km. Ongki Kurniawan, Grab Indonesia executive director, says the e-scooters can travel up to 15km per hour and can travel up to 40km when the battery is fully charged. Users can access the service

Fujitsu is sharing its digital technologies with Autonomic, a subsidiary of Ford Smart Mobility, to support the automotive industry in transitioning to Mobility as a Service (MaaS) models. The partners will deliver Autonomic’s Transportation Mobility Cloud (TMC) and Fujitsu systems integration services to Ford Motor, followed by a rollout to other automakers globally. Fujitsu says Autonomic’s TMC, supported by Amazon Web Services, connects to connected vehicles, mass transit and city infrastructure with

Greenlots, a Shell New Energies subsidiary, is to install DC fast charging stations at Columbus Yellow Cab’s depot facilities and several routes throughout central Ohio. Greenlots says the technology will allow Yello Cab operators to reduce charging times for its electric taxis, monitor the fleet in real-time and increase utilisation of each vehicle. Morgan Kauffman, CEO at Yellow Cab, says: "With this project, we're showing local residents that EVs are a viable substitution for traditional internal com

Conduent Transportation has appointed Scott Doering as general manager, road usage charging. Doering joins from Cubic Transportation Systems, where he was business director for road user charging. Based in San Diego, he will be responsible for leading Conduent’s tolling operations. Mick Slattery, CEO, Conduent Transportation, says: “Scott brings more than 20 years of tolling experience and valuable insights to our team.” Doering holds bachelor’s degrees in computer science and mathematics from the Uni

Q-Free is to install 68 traffic detectors from ADEC Technologies around Ljubljana and the A1 highway towards the coastal region of Slovenia. ADEC says up to three of its TDC3-8 (TLS 8+1) traffic detectors will be installed at 30 locations to manage traffic. Jure Pirc, project manager at Q-Free, says the detectors are used mainly for “traffic data acquisition” as part of the traffic management system on the highway. He explains that speed limits are regulated automatically via variable message signs (VM

French transit operator RATP has joined forces with Airbus to explore the feasibility of urban air mobility in the Île-de-France region. RATP says the partners will commit to analysing the conditions for developing flying vehicles and work on urban integration to make a service available to as many people as possible. As part of the agreement, both companies intend to establish an ecosystem of partners to develop the transport offering. Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus, says: “We already have the t

Aimsun has released a software platform for the large-scale design and validation of path planning algorithms for autonomous vehicles (AV). The company says Aimsun Auto allows test vehicles to drive inside digital cities - virtual copies of transportation networks, where users can safely explore the limits of AV technology. Paolo Rinelli, global head of product management at Aimsun, says Auto removes the need to drive around seeking conditions that users want to test or to “script each actor’s behaviour

Vaisala has launched a route optimisation service that it claims reduces the time involved to create treatment routes based on weather hazards, network priorities and available resources. The Vaisala Route Manager allows details of the road network and available resources such as depot locations and vehicle capacity to be imported to produce optimised routes with instructions which can upload to vehicles, the company adds. According to Vaisala, the solution allows planners to create unlimited sets of rou

Michelin has bought French telematics provider Masternaut in a bid to speed up the development of its services and solutions business for light vehicles and fleets. Michelin says the acquisition will enable Masternaut to roll out its offering across Europe by taking advantage of Michelin’s geographical coverage. It is also expected to improve product performance and develop data science deployments such as predictive maintenance. Florent Menegaux, managing general partner at Michelin, says: “Mastern

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) is to extend its SimplyGo system to allow commuters to pay for transport via Visa contactless cards from 6 June. The move follows an initial launch in which SimplyGo was made available for commuters using Mastercard in March. Yeo Teck Guan, LTA senior group director, public transport, says: “We are seeing a steady uptake in usage since its launch, with an average of over 120,000 daily trips. With the inclusion of Visa, more commuters will benefit,” Users