News

The Move NY team, which came up with a plan to improve New York’s transportation system by making the City’s tolling system fairer, has launched SmartParticipation (link http://nyc.smartparticipation.com/), a website dedicated to gathering public comments on congestion in New York City.

Nissan is heading the electric vehicle revolution with more than 550 electric taxis now on the road in Europe. During 2015 alone, over 100 electric vehicles were delivered to taxi companies across Europe and growth of the electric taxi market looks set to continue, as its popularity has started to take hold in Eastern Europe.

Doubling summary penal fees has improved traffic behaviour, according to police in Finland. A recent legal amendment has reduced the number of penal orders and fees issued in September and October.

S public policy think tank the Reason Foundation has unveiled a detailed long-range transportation plan to reduce the traffic congestion that has plagued southern California for decades. The Reason Foundation plan would decrease southern California’s infamous gridlock by creating a connected network of variably priced toll lanes on all of the region’s major highways and expressways

International public transit systems provider Init is expanding its headquarters in Chesapeake, Virginia. The company will consolidate its administrative offices, two manufacturing firms and warehouse operations into a 70,000 sq. ft facility. The new office will house Init’s staff including their engineering, development, sales, customer support, information technology, project management and administrative departments. Init and the company’s two manufacturing firms, Superior Quality Manufacturing (SQM)

UK CCTV solutions manufacturer AMG is to establish a pilot smart city centre surveillance solution in Beirut city centre, Lebanon, working with systems integrator Site Technology. The ongoing project originally began with the installation of 13 ANPR cameras being transmitted over a hybrid analogue and ethernet fibre optic backbone and covering a small area in the very centre of Beirut. The project uses the AMG 9000 Ethernet and AMG4700 hybrid analogue and ethernet series. This solution provides transmis

More than half (56 per cent) of the drivers participating in an Insurance Research Council (IRC) online public opinion survey have made changes in how they drive since installing a telematics device provided by their insurance company in their primary vehicle. The report, Auto Insurance Telematics: Consumer Attitudes and Opinions, also claims that 36 per cent of respondents said they have made small changes in how they drive and 18 per cent said they have made significant changes. Thirty-eight per cent s

Tesla’s Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to recruit ‘hardcore software engineers’ to work on the company’s autopilot system. He issued a Tweet saying “Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve generalised full autonomy” and followed it up with another saying that he will personally be handling interviews. The company released its Autopilot system for its Model S car at the end of October and claims it is the only fully integrated autopilot system involving four different feedback modules:

According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the number of active fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in Europe was 4.40 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.1 percent, this number is expected to reach 8.90 million by 2019.

With a total of 50 buses running on 34 routes, Stadtwerke Schweinfurt, Germany, has opted for a new e-ticketing solution from IVU Traffic Technologies to build up a flexible e-ticketing system in order to make bus travel more convenient for its customers.

UK company ParkCloud is to partner with SAP in a technology agreement which will see ParkCloud will integrate its solution with SAP Vehicles Network running on the SAP HANA Cloud platform for the Internet of Things. When used together with SAP Vehicles Network the ParkCloud solution will help enable drivers across Europe to reserve parking, manage park reservation systems and parking inventory. ParkCloud offers 340,000 bookable parking spaces in 1,250 car parks across 414 locations worldwide, and was

Audi and the city of Somerville, in Boston, Massachusetts, metropolitan area, have signed a memorandum (MOU) of understanding to develop an urban strategy for Somerville, applying technologies for swarm intelligence or automated parking and networking cars with traffic lights. In the MOU, signed at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Mayor Josef A. Curtatone and Rupert Stadler, chairman of the executive board of Audi, agreed close cooperation and a focus on exchanging know-how and testing ne

Fourteen MEPs have signed a letter to EU Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc demanding the European Commission propose legislation to impose new tolls on trucks, according to Euractiv. The Commission's Energy Union plans announced earlier this year dropped truck tolls laid out in earlier versions. There is currently no CO2 standard for trucks in Europe, although car and van CO2 emissions are limited. European Commission data shows trucks contributing one quarter of CO2 emissions from road transport in

At the 2015 Polis conference, taking place in Brussels this week, 400 mobility professionals from across Europe and beyond have come together to debate urban and regional mobility. European Vice-President Jyrki Katainen, Commissioner for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness said at the conference's opening plenary session on "Smart Cities. What's in a name? Talented people want to work in smart sustainable cities. Polis is a crucial network in helping cities to share and to get access to know-ho

Expert psychologists have concluded that multi-tasking whilst driving is a myth – and the most dangerous of those driving multi-tasks is texting and talking on a mobile phone, according to a new report produced by the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) and the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL). The research focuses on the dangers involved when drivers try and engage in more than one task, indicating this can have a ‘detrimental’ effect on the quality and accuracy of driving performance. The find