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UK LED lighting specialist Gardasoft Vision has been acquired by Optex of Japan and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary. Founded in 1999, Gardasoft specialises in the design and manufacture of high performance pulse/strobe controllers for LED lighting and high intensity LED illuminators, providing solutions to the global machine vision and intelligent traffic automatic number plate recognition markets. Being part of Optex will allow Gardasoft to extend the applications of its new Triniti technology

Cubic Transportation Systems’ (CTS) Ventra, the account-based open payment system launched in 2013 for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and suburban bus operator Pace, has processed more than one billion account-based journeys. CTA, with daily ridership of 1.6 million journeys, is the first major transit system in North America to implement account-based open payment and is Cubic’s first large-scale deployment of its NextAccount technology. Ventra supports both account-based processing through an a

According to Nathan Marsh, Smart Transport director at EY, a new Bus Services Bill included today’s Queen’s Speech could herald just the beginning of a journey to smarter travel and paves the way for cities and regions to reap the benefits of a London-style network. The speech also included a range of measures to modernise the UK’s economy, such as a Modern Transport Bill which included legislation to enable the development of commercial spaceports and new laws to make the UK ready to pioneer driverless

Following successful field testing, the first phase of the Masabi MTA eTix apps developed for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is expected to launch on select lines of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North (MNR) in June. The app, which allows customers to purchase train tickets via a mobile device, will first debut on the LIRR’s Port Washington Branch and Metro-North’s Hudson Line and will be available to all Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North customers by the end of

The latest Smart Insights report, Smart ticketing on the Path to Dematerialization, explores the dynamics and the specificities of the smart ticketing business. It anticipates that in spite of the growth of software and service based solutions, public transport operators will issue over one billion smart cards by 2021. According to this research, mobile ticketing is expected to experience a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 51 per cent over the 2016-2021 period while the share of contactless and ma

The International Transport Forum (ITF) has awarded India-based technology firm, KPIT Technologies, the Promising Innovation in Transport Award 2016, for its development of a system that can convert new as well as existing diesel buses into full electric buses. KPIT’s smart electric bus technology is modular and highly versatile, making is possible to retrofit different vehicle types from mini buses to large 12-metre public transport buses. The first bus retrofitted by KPIT went into serviced in 2015

A joint venture of Jacobs Engineering Group and Aurecon has been awarded a contract to carry out the engineering design for the multi-billion dollar WestConnex New M5 Project in Sydney, Australia. WestConnex is a critical part of the New South Wales (NSW) Government’s integrated transport solution and aims to significantly reduce the congestion impacting hundreds of thousands of NSW road users every day. The New M5, which is expected to double the capacity of the heavily congested M5 East motorway co

London Congestion Trends, an in-depth study of the causes of traffic congestion in London between 2012 and 2015 published by Inrix, indicates that congestion in London is increasing, with journey times in Central London growing by 12 per cent annually. Inrix says this is consistent with data that shows that the London economy and population are growing, which normally results in an increase in gridlock. Further, unemployment and fuel prices are down, both of which usually mean a rise in traffic. Despite thi

FM Conway, the main contractor for the traffic management improvement scheme at the Port of Dover, has awarded Swarco the contract to install 15 variable message signs as part of a US$123 million (£85 million) capital investment programme to better manage and control vehicles through a new freight holding facility to remove more than 4km of queuing traffic from Kent’s highways. Two signs are used to direct heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) into Customs or the holding facility, depending on the quantity of tra

The City of Seattle, Washington, is to implement Siemens’ Concert, an integrated traffic management platform that connects both Siemens and third-party systems across the city including traffic control centres, intersection controllers and parking guidance systems. The Concert platform will integrate Siemens’ TACTICS traffic control system as well as the city’s existing dynamic message sign management system the local travel time system and the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) freeway sys

New online research, commissioned by Nuance Communications and carried out by YouGov, which quizzed drivers on their expectations around in-car digital technology, found that time wasted in traffic (70 per cent) and searching for parking spaces (53 per cent) were cited as British drivers’ most common gripes when on the road. This survey, of 2062 adults, of which 1621 have a driving licence, demonstrates that British drivers would look for in-car technology to humanise their driving experience, by enabli

Bikeplus, the UK national representative body for bike share, is calling for the inclusion of three key points in the new government cycling and walking strategy as part of a number of measures to encourage the take-up of cycling. These are: A greater emphasis on improving access to cycles through public bike share schemes, pool bikes, hire bikes, loans and ‘try out’ loans; A recognition of the role of technology in expanding the market for cycling. This includes electric bikes, bike share docking soluti

The CarConnect project, which aims to help the electricity industry better understand how plug-in electric vehicles (PIVs) charge at home in harmony with the electricity grid, is now under way in the UK. It is known from other projects that clusters of PIVs will have an impact on local electricity networks; analysis from the recently completed My Electric Avenue project indicates that by 2050 the electricity industry in Great Britain may have to invest an additional US$3.6 billion (£2.2 billion) to upgra

TISPOL and An Garda Síochána will launch Project EDWARD at next week's road policing conference in Dublin. The first European Day Without a Road Death (Project EDWARD) has been set for Wednesday 21 September 2016 and participation is expected from all 30 TISPOL member countries. Project EDWARD has been created to assist in re-energising the reduction of fatalities and serious injuries on Europe’s roads. TISPOL is calling on representatives of national governments, private organisations, public agencie

Apple has invested US$1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service DiDi Chuxing, a move that Apple chief executive Tim Cook said would help the company better understand the critical Chinese market. According to Reuters, the move aligns Apple with Uber Technologies’ chief rival in China, as automakers and technology companies forge new alliances and make cross investments. General Motors, for example, recently bought autonomous driving technology company Cruise Automation and has also taken a stake in US ri