News

US engineering services firm Parsons has promoted Thomas Topolski executive vice president, infrastructure business development to help extend the company’s infrastructure portfolio while also leading proposal operations. In his new role, Topolski will be based at the company’s Centreville office in Virginia and report to Carey Smith, Parsons’ chief operating officer. Smith says Topolski has more than 30 years of experience in strategy, business development and operations for infrastructure companie

Gojek to expand ride-hailing service across Singapore

Volvo Trucks puts its first commercial autonomous vehicles into action

RoadBotics has been chosen to use their machine-learning technology to assess the city of Detroit’s entire 4,185km road network. The company will work with PlanetM, a Michigan state networking partnership of mobility organisations, educational institutions, research and development groups and government agencies working together in the automotive sector. RoadBotics will provide Detroit transportation officials with its standard Artificial Intelligence pavement assessment as well as a new AI Maintenanc

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) in Hawaii is trialing Holo Card, an account-based electronic fare system from Init, over a three-month period. It will then be made available on all buses owned by Oahu Transit Services. The e-fare system will allow passengers using Oahu’s TheBus service to load passes or add value via their mobile device on route to board a bus or by visiting a local retail outlet. This project stems from an agreement with the City and County of Honolulu Department

International Road Dynamics (IRD) is to install its Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) sorting system to protect road infrastructure in the US state of South Dakota. The $1.3 million deal is part of a wider ambition from the South Dakota Department of Transportation to deploy more WIM systems throughout the state. The Port of Entry Commercial Vehicle WIM Sorting System is scheduled to be operational by December 2019 at the Valley Springs Port of Entry on Interstate 90 east of Sioux Falls. It is expected to weigh all

Time is running out for submissions to the ITS European Congress in Brainport, Netherlands, in June. ITS experts have until 11 January to submit special interest Sessions proposals and papers to be considered for presentation and publication at the event. Experts are invited to share ideas and discuss mobility challenges that cities face and how they can be addressed through ITS solutions. Draft papers should be a minimum of five pages for technical and commercial topics, and nine pages for scient

The US Department of Transportation (USDoT) is seeking public comment on how Vehicle to Everything (V2X) technology should be integrated into the transport environment. The organisation says it intends to maintain the priority use of 5.9Ghz spectrum for transportation safety communications. It points out that the automotive industry and local authorities “are already deploying V2X technology and actively utilising all seven channels of the 5.9 GHz band” and says that technology such as Cellular-V2X (C-V2

London could reduce congestion by emulating New York when it comes to open data, claims technology firm Karhoo. New York has publicly-available anonymised TPEP/LPEP75 data which allowed Karhoo to assess the impact of taxi and private hire (PH) movements on traffic flow, congestion and pollution, the company says. It adds that if Transport for London (TfL) were to follow suit, it “would be quick and relatively low-cost given that almost every licenced vehicle is connected to tracking systems already”. Tf

Init has opened a development centre in Ireland to develop software for ticketing systems and field devices. Currently, eight employees are working at the facility located in the town of Maynooth, Kildare. Future plans include the creation of 20 additional jobs. Matthias Kühn, director of Init Ireland, says: “This also is an opportunity to improve the service for our existing customers in Ireland.” Init has completed projects in Ireland which include the delivery of an integrated ITS solution to help D

The next generation of roads - the ‘fifth generation’ - will provide the world’s highway authorities with a big leap forward, delegates to the recent European Road Conference heard. Adewole Adesiyun, deputy secretary general at the Brussels-based Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories (FEHRL), said a paradigm shift is taking place, offering “solutions to existing and future problems with new ways to use smart, intelligent and dynamic technologies”. The first four generations of roa

AID-Autonomous Intelligent Driving, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Audi, is partnering with Luminar Technologies to deploy LiDAR products. Launched in March last year, AID has an autonomous vehicle (AV) test fleet in Munich and bills itself as the ‘centre of excellence’ for urban autonomous driving in the Volkswagen Group. Luminar LiDARs will be installed on the roof of the AVs to give a 360-degree field of view. “Perception remains a bottleneck today for autonomous mobility and we quickly worked to

A European accelerator programme that supports sustainable mobility solutions is now open. Free to enter, projects for the European Start-up Prize for Mobility (EUSP) will be judged on criteria such as innovation, market traction and ecological impact. The jury includes Karima Delli, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s Transport and Tourism Committee – who launched the award - and Violeta Bulc, European commissioner for transport. The public-private initiative was co-founded by Boston Consulting Gro

Lyft has established a dedicated zone at the west exit of the Cadillac Fairview Toronto Eaton Shopping Centre to help visitors get to and from the venue. Riders can then use Lyft’s app to choose specific pick-up and drop-off points around the shopping centre’s offices, shops and restaurants. The partnership says it will gather feedback and adapt the service to meet the needs of riders. Last month, Lyft entered an agreement with the Regional Transportation Commission of South Nevada to offer cheaper ride

Kyocera has installed roadside units to enable Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communications for a self-driving bus test in Japan. The Mobility Innovation Consortium, a group led by East Japan Railway (JR East), is organising the three-month trial to evaluate self-driving technology for bus transit applications. Advanced Smart Mobility will provide the bus, which will operate on JR East’s bus rapid transit (BRT) lines in Rikuzentakata City, Iwate Prefecture. High-sensitivity magnetic impedance