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Loughborough University in the UK is leading a three-year initiative which aims to assess the impact of introducing connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) in Europe. The £5.7m project, called Levitate, is funded by the European Union and will help European cities to plan for the effect C/AVs will have on infrastructure and society. Levitate began this month and will consider how AVs might improve safety, congestion and the environment, while looking at key policy decisions which would maximise thei

Waymo has launched a driverless taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, where riders will be charged for the journeys they take. In a blog post, CEO John Krafcik says the commercial self-driving service – called Waymo One - is available to early riders who have already been using Waymo’s technology. The company hopes to make the service available to more members of the public as it adds more vehicles and drives in more places, he writes. “Self-driving technology is new to many, so we’re proceeding carefully wi

Redvision has launched its outdoor Vega 2052 camera which it says is waterproof and resistant to vandalism. The company says the bullet camera does not require a junction box and is made from die-cast aluminium. It features a marine-grade plating as well as durable powder-coating. The camera’s cabling is routed through the housing and inside its walls or pedestal mounting brackets. Vega 2052 features a 2MP camera module with a Sony Exmor low light sensor.

Videalert’s CCTV cameras are being used by Blackburn with Darwin Council in north west England to tackle dangerous parking at a nearby red route. The cameras are located on the A678 at Copy Nook on the Furthergate Link Road, a route which was widened under the Pennine Reach Scheme to help improve the flow of bus traffic between Hyndburn, Blackburn and Darwen. Videalert says its low-cost Digital Video Platform will deliver this enforcement via a single lamp post-mounted processor which is equipped w

Ericsson’s Connected Vehicle Cloud (CVC) platform is being used by Volvo Cars to further develop its digital services. The five-year deal is expected to allow Volvo Cars to provide drivers with services such as automation, fleet management, telematics, navigation and infotainment. Ericsson says its platform takes account of legal, security and privacy obligations – such as compliance with the European Union general data protection regulation. Åsa Tamsons, head of business area technologies & new business

Marysville has become the latest urban area to join DriveOhio’s programme to test connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs). The suburb of Ohio state capital Columbus has plans to equip 1,200 vehicles with on-board units as part of the AV pilot created earlier this year by state governor John Kasich. Columbus itself has just been the recipient of a smart cities award for its ITS programmes and is among several cities to have signed up already to DriveOhio, along with Athens and Dublin. “Self-drivi

Feig Electronic has deployed more than 600 radio frequency identification (RFID) readers in India to allow drivers to pay for tolls without stopping at toll booths. The delivery is part of the National Highway Authority in India’s (NHAI) Fastag programme, an open road tolling method that relies on open ISO standard RFID technology. In a statement, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways says Fastag enabled vehicles can pass through dedicated lanes without stopping at toll plazas on national highways.

Lens manufacturer Tamron and visions system integrator Macq have signed a deal to produce a new camera. Tamron is providing the lens, while Belgium-based Macq is providing the housing and the electronics boards – and will sell the camera as its own product. Powered by artificial intelligence, the traffic sensor can be used for all kinds of applications, Macq says. These include: traffic monitoring, automatic make and model recognition, speed control, parking and automatic number plate recognition.

Israel-based cybersecurity firm SafeRide Technologies has joined the Genivi Alliance in a bid to secure connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) from hacking threats. Genivi is a non-profit alliance focused on delivering open source, in-vehicle infotainment and connected software. Hilik Stein, chief technology officer at SafeRide, says the Vsentry cybersecurity software will be available on the Genivi development platform.

Keolis has launched an on-demand shared mobility service in Bordeaux, France, in a bid to reduce congestion and the impact on the local environment. The Ke’op service operates in a 50km2 area and provides connections to the public transport network of the metropole, including tram lines A and B. Jean-Pierre Farandou, executive chairman of Keolis, says the service should enable the company to meet the needs of transport authorities in areas where density does not justify the installation of major transpor

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) app Cowlines is to be rolled out across 62 North American cities following successful trials in Vancouver, Canada. The app, developed by Greenlines Technology, is expected to allow citizens to select the greenest, fastest and cheapest route by combining all modes of transportation. Riders can calculate the total cost of the trip, the length of the journey and its carbon footprint. Cowlines aggregates all transport options and measures the greenhouse gas emissions based on t

Sixty years today, 2,300 drivers drove along an eight-mile section of road in England – the first motorway in the country. Opened in 1958, the Preston bypass – now part of the M6 - only had two lanes in each direction, with no safety barrier in the central reservation. There was also no technology – not even simple electronic signs. Highways England is pledging to celebrate the birthday by completing four upgrades on the M6 by spring 2022. The £900m project will add extra lanes and better technolog

Columbus, Ohio has been named City of the Year in the Smart Cities Dive website’s awards for its work on transit and electrification. The US city won the US Department of Transportation’s inaugural Smart City Challenge two years ago – and is rolling out a variety of smart city-related programmes. Smart Cities Dive said the city’s “biggest area of progress this year” has been its increased reliance on electric vehicles (EVs), including in its bus fleet and other government vehicles. City authoritie

Lyft, the ride-hailing firm which rivals Uber, has shown off the distinctive, pink-tyred bicycles which it is to use in its new bike-share programme. The company has completed its acquisition of US bike-share giant Motivate, which was announced in the summer, and will branch into two-wheel journeys soon. The company says this represents a “natural extension of Lyft’s vision to improve transportation access, sustainability and affordability”. Lyft says that 80% of all bike-share rides in the US were co

A project to avert transport chaos in hurricane season and a programme which led to a huge reduction in road crashes were among the big winners in a new US awards scheme. The US National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE)’s inaugural Transportation Systems Management and Operations (TSMO) Awards were open to cities, counties, metropolitan or rural planning organisations, state departments of transportation (DoTs) and private companies. Patrick Son, managing director of NOCoE, says 60 entries high