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Engineering, planning and consulting services company Michael Baker International recently completed a nearly US$7-million project for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to collect data from more than 8,600 traffic signals across the state. Over a year, the Michael Baker team, working with PennDOT’s Traffic Signal Asset Management System (TSAMS), collected nearly 20 million data fields for each of the 8,623 traffic signals analysed, which populated a centralised database to support Pen

Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) has contracted with the City of Cape Canaveral, home of the Kennedy Space Center for the implementation of its latest-generation GPS-enabled Opticom emergency vehicle pre-emption solution, which works alongside intersection controllers to give priority to fire rescue vehicles. The existing Opticom GPS system will be expanded, with 12 additional fire rescue vehicles and six more intersections to be equipped with Opticom components. The GPS-enabled system allows for wir

Austria’s highway and expressway operator ASFINAG (Autobahnen-und-Schnellstrassen-Finanzierungs-Aktiengesellschaft) has awarded Kapsch TrafficCom the contract to implement and operate the GO Maut 2.0 Mauttechnik toll collection system (national toll collection system for vehicles over 3.5 metric tons). The contract comprises modernising roadside infrastructure at around 500 locations and upgrading the control centre up to the latest technological standards. Instead of two gantries, future roadside tol

US-based software developer CrowdOptic and business and training company Futton are to implement CrowdOptic’s live-streaming solution on smartglasses, complete with license plate recognition, for the Ministry of Traffic in China. In addition, Futton has initiated testing of CrowdOptic’s solution for situational awareness and anomaly detection for use by the Ministry of Traffic and other police departments. The live-streaming and licence plate recognition capabilities are being deployed on smart glasses,

Traffic congestion is costing UK businesses approximately US$957 million (£767 million) a year in lost productivity, according to research conducted by TomTom. The TomTom Traffic Index has found traffic across the UK’s 25 most congested cities and towns increases the time each vehicle spends on the road by an average of 127 hours a year. And the situation seems to be getting worse. An average journey in 2015 took 29 per cent longer than it would in free-flowing conditions, up from a 25 per cent delay

Scalable CIPURSE-based electronic fare collection systems are now being implemented in Russia by German company Infineon Technologies and Russian systems integrator Udobny Marshrut (UM). UM has started roll-out in Izhevsk and Angarsk; seven other metropolitan regions are planned to follow by end of 2016. A total of two million people are eventually expected to benefit from customised, easy-to-use and particularly secure ticketing solutions for public transportation. Unlike the proprietary solutions c

The Dutch government is looking into measures to cut the number of deaths and injuries caused by drivers being distracted by their phones, transport minister Melanie Schultz told Algemeen Dagblad. This could mean that mobile phone manufacturers could be required to fit devices that stop people using their handsets while driving. Currently motorists only break the law if they pick up the phone while driving, but the government says research shows that even hands-free use significantly increases the ris

Ontario, Canada, is supporting innovation in the transportation sector by launching the first automated vehicle (AV) pilot program in Canada, led by the University of Waterloo, the Erwin Hymer Group and BlackBerry QNX. The pilot brings together a range of expertise from the research, manufacturing and technology sectors to advance innovation and capability in Ontario's AV sector. The WATCar Project at the University of Waterloo's Centre for Automotive Research will monitor a Lincoln MKZ for performan

The Charlotte City Council in the US has chosen Siemens to build six new S70 streetcars for the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), the public transit system operated across Mecklenburg County and four surrounding counties. The vehicles will be designed with advanced hybrid technology that features a battery storage system, which allows for operation in portions of Uptown without the need for power from an overhead wire. The new streetcars will add to the 42 Siemens-built light rail vehicles currently

The global intelligent transportation system (ITS) market is expected to reach US$66.5 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Research and Markets. The report, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Market Analysis By Type, By Application And Segment Forecasts To 2024, indicates that usage of ITS to reduce road accidents and increase safety is a major driving force for the ITS market. Demand for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication in order to enhance road s

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) researchers have been studying futuristic transport solutions for car-free urban centres and have come up with an optimal design for a network of accelerating moving walkways. This is not a new concept – the first moving walkways were seen in Chicago in 1893 and seven years later they were used at the world’s fair in Paris. They are also regularly used the world over in airports and transport terminals. As part of the PostCarW

The UK Transport sector needs to increase its focus on cyber-security in the face of rapidly emerging technological developments, according to Transport Systems Catapult (TSC). In a new report, supported by IBM, the Institute of Engineering Technology (IET), the Intelligent Mobility Partnership (IMPART) and the Digital Catapult, the TSC cites numerous trends in the realms of technology, cyber security, mobility, and society are all converging to make it a much more complex environment in which to deliver

San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation System has apparently been targeted by hackers over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the agency to shut down its light-rail ticketing machines and point-of-payment systems and allowing passengers to ride for free. Agency computers displayed the message "You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted", the San Francisco Examiner reported on Saturday. According to the BBC, the hackers have made a ransom demand of 100 Bitcoin, which amounts to about $70,000 (£56,000). Jon Ge

A Strabag construction consortium is to build a 5.6 km section of the D3 motorway in northern Slovakia on behalf of the state motorway company NDS. The US$253 million (€ 239 million) contract is scheduled to be completed after 48 months of construction.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which manages all surface transportation in the city, including the Municipal Railway (Muni), has launched a first of its kind Vision Zero education campaign targeting people who ride motorcycles. The campaign is funded by a US$188,267 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.