News

New OEM smart mobility divisions, growing safety concerns relating to semi-autonomous driving, and recognition by national governments of the environmental and societal advantages of driverless vehicles will accelerate the deployment of more autonomous forms of driving, according to ABI Research. Its report, The Market Potential for Semi-Autonomous Driving, expects that semi-autonomous systems will continue to dominate the market over the next decade, with SAE level 2 and 3 systems accounting for 86 per

UK technology company telent has been awarded a place on all 15 lots of the Crown Commercial Service’s Traffic Management Technology 2 (TMT2) agreement for the supply of a wide range of traffic management technology products, solutions and professional services. The TMT2 agreement can be used by organisations across the UK public sector including central government, local government, health, education, devolved administrations, emergency services, defence and not-for-profit organisations. An online ca

Highways England, the company responsible for running over 4000 miles of England’s motorways and major trunk roads, is to become the third partner in a collaboration to improve motorcycle rider safety. The government-owned company will join the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) as an equal partner in facilitating practical changes to roads, as detailed in a jointly written whitepaper: Realising the Motorcycling Opportunity: A Motorcycle Safety and Trans

Over 86 per cent of UK motorists think distraction caused by mobile phones has become worse in the last three years, according to the second Safety Culture Survey commissioned by road safety charity IAM RoadSmart. In second place was congestion at 81 per cent, reflecting the increasing number of vehicles on the roads as the recession ends. Of the 2,000 UK drivers surveyed, nearly three quarters believed aggressive driving had worsened over the last three years, with more than 60 per cent reporting the

Rail technology specialist Bombardier Transportation has been awarded an eight-year contract by Montréal's Agence Métropolitaine de Transport (AMT) for the operations and maintenance of the AMT commuter rail fleet on all of its six lines in the greater Montréal area. The contract is valued at approximately US$246 million (CAD$331 million) and includes a two-year option. Bombardier has been providing maintenance services for AMT since 2010. This new contract not only covers the maintenance of AMT's entire

The Oklahoma Federal Highway Administration has designated the I-35, I-40 and I-44 highways as alternative fuel corridors, a special designation aimed at improving the mobility of passenger and commercial vehicles that run on alternative fuels. This new designation means special highway signage indicating the nearest alternative fuelling station will eventually be placed along these highways by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. The federal Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act directed th

US self-driving car startup nuTonomy is to begin testing its growing fleet of self-driving cars on specific public streets in a designated area of Boston. The company, which launched a self-driving car trial in Singapore in September, has been given permission to operate its vehicles in the city’s Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park. nuTonomy equips its vehicles with a software system which has been integrated with high-performance sensing and computing components, to enable safe operation without a driver.

The University of Michigan (U-M) is offering use of its new research vehicles as test beds for academic and industry researchers to test self-driving and connected vehicle technologies at its proving ground. These open connected and automated research vehicles, or open CAVs, are equipped with sensors including radar, lidar and cameras, among other features and will be able to link to a robot operating system. An open development platform for connected vehicle communications will be added later. The op

A new consortium, initiated by Ericsson in Germany, aims to create an infrastructure and real application environment on a motorway test track, to carry out tests in vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, digitisation of the railway infrastructure and other applications using 5G technology. The 30 kilometre test track consists of several construction sections on the 30 kilometre ‘digital test field motorway’ along the A9 motorway and the high speed rail track between Nuremberg and Greding. The in

Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) is to carry out a major upgrade to the Maryland Transit Authority’s (MTA) automatic fare collection (AFC) system, under a US$4.8 million contract modification which also includes setting the foundation for new features and functionality. The upgraded system will provide the MTA with the opportunity to accept new payment methods, such as mobile payments, as well as add new features, including a new customer web portal and an integration path with third-party transport servi

Northamptonshire County Council and the University of Northampton have received a significant share of US$1.2 million (€1 million) European funding to help shape policy for local authorities wishing to purchase public transport systems. There is an increasing global demand for sustainable and innovative transport in cities, but many authorities use out-of-date methods to choose and buy transport systems, which means they are missing opportunities to purchase the system that’s best suited for their urban

Ertico-ITS Europe has issued a call for contributions for the 12th ITS European Congress, which takes place in Strasbourg, 19-22 June 2017. The main theme of the congress is ‘ITS beyond borders’ and contributions should address the seven main topics, including mobility services, next generation goods delivery, transport networks evaluation, connected and automated transport, satellite technology applied to mobility, ITS and the environment, or the author’s own ideas. More information on the topics is

Ahead of the Autumn Statement this week a motor industry body is calling on the UK Government to make a US$37 million (£30 million) investment in specialist electric and hybrid vehicle training for thousands of maintenance and repair technicians in the independent retail sector. The Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) believes the investment is crucial to support the public switch to ultra low emission vehicles (ULEV). The IMI says the Government will need to spend a proportion of the £600m it has se

The Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, local governments and businesses are to jointly invest US$96 million (€90 million) in the Talking Traffic Partnership up to and including 2020. The partnership with the traffic industry, telecommunications and internet companies and automotive companies aims to develop and deliver innovative traffic applications to Dutch roads in the next five years. Participants in the Talking Traffic Partnership are Vialis, Dynniq, Swarco, Sweco, KoHartog Verke

International Road Dynamics (IRD) has partnered with the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) to launch a new weigh station bypass system, NJPass, at all three inbound New Jersey weigh stations for commercial vehicles participating in the service. Traffic statistics show that over 150,000 trucks encounter these three weigh stations on an annual basis creating a need for a traffic management tool like NJPass. IRD sales manager for NJPass, Eric Hooks, said the technology allows compliant veh