News

ITS America president and CEO Regina Hopper has applauded leaders of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee for introducing legislative proposals that seek to encourage innovation, advance the research and deployment of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and strengthen the nation’s research and technology programs. She said, “ITS America’s members would like to thank US Representatives Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Comstock, and Dan Lipinski for their commitment to modernising our nat

The number of pedestrian countdown sites across London will be doubled by summer 2016, the Mayor and Transport for London (TfL) have confirmed. The technology forms a key part of London’s first Pedestrian Safety Action Plan and replaces the ‘blackout’ period on traffic signals with a numerical counter to show how long pedestrians have left to safely cross the road. The Mayor had set TfL a target of upgrading 400 crossings – 10 per cent of all those in London – with the technology by April 2016. This targ

A new mathematic algorithm that can predict commuter train delays up to two hours in the future has been developed in Stockholm, Sweden, by the city’s commuter train operator, Stockholmstag, and mathematician Wilhelm Landerholm. The ‘commuter prognosis’ uses big data to visualise the entire commuter train system two hours into the future, simultaneously calculating how the delay affects other trains in the system and automatically providing the information to traffic control centres, enabling them to in

Norfolk County Council has awarded a five year, US$770,000 contract to highways asset management software provider Yotta. The deal includes Internet hosted versions of Mayrise highways and street works software, as well as Yotta’s visualised asset management platform, Horizons. The contract also includes multi-platform support for mobile devices as well as integration with the Council’s customer relationship management (CRM), finance system and third party contractor works management system. The Mayrise

The first BigDataEurope at 1000 CET on 21 September will look at the societal challenge of Smart, Green and Integrated Transport. The webinar sets out to introduce the BigDataEurope project in general as well as the various stakeholders and applications for Big Data in the Transport domain in particular, followed by a question and answer session. More information on the agenda and speakers will be available shortly. Register for the seminar here.

One of Europe’s leading car importers has selected the connected car technology of TomTom Telematics to provide its customer with access to real-time information about their vehicles’ status and performance. Pon’s Automobiel Handel will use the TomTom Telematics cloud-based services platform and the company’s mobile app development expertise that draws upon vehicle dashboard information for a national pilot across the Netherlands.

A failsafe track switch designed to eradicate a 200-year-old problem on the railway has been created by engineers at Loughborough University in the UK. The technology, known as Repoint, is a robust and reliable points mechanism which will improve safety, reduce maintenance costs and boost capacity on the railways.

Inrix is accelerating its development of smart parking services with the acquisition of ParkMe, a Santa Monica, California company that helps drives find parking, make reservations and mobile payments worldwide. According to Inrix, the acquisition expands its data aggregation and industry expertise, enabling it to more rapidly deliver a comprehensive set of parking services, including locating, comparing, reserving and paying for parking from a smartphone or vehicle. The acquisition also expands the par

According to research company MarketsandMarkets, the market for commercial telematics is expected to grow from US$20.02 billion in 2015 to US$47.58 billion by 2020. In terms of regions, Europe is expected to be the largest market in terms of market size, while Middle East & Africa and Asia-Pacific (APAC) are expected to experience an increase in market traction, during the forecast period. Latin America is expected to experience a high growth rate and adoption trend in this market.

The University of Michigan (U-M) plans to invest US$100 million over the next five years in a new data science initiative aimed at working with big data sets that can further research into such things as driverless cars, medicine and climate change. The money will pay for 35 new faculty members to be hired over the next four years, support interdisciplinary data-related research initiatives and foster new methodological approaches to big data, as well as enabling the university to expand its research com

The Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) has revealed that nearly 18,000 pedestrians were injured in an incident involving a vehicle in the last full year with analysis available. The charity is calling for an even greater focus on pedestrian protection to make cars safer and raise awareness of the risks. The figures come from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by the IAM, Britain’s biggest independent road safety charity, asking for details of the most common pairs of contributory factors repo

According to Juliette van Driel of Dutch government organisation ProRail, who is to speak on the subject at the Rail Technology Conference in Paris in November, there is a requirement for identification tags on European trains. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags enable the monitoring and tracking of the separate components of a wagon, such as axles and wheels, over time. This enables the early identification of locomotive, carriage and wagon defects and the prevention of derailments. “It’s imp

The Sturt Highway, an important road link between Sydney and Adelaide, will become the fourth stretch of South Australian road to implement average speed cameras when the system is activated on 14 September. The cameras calculate the average speed of a vehicle between two points, as well as the vehicle’s actual speed at each camera location. Average speed cameras have been operating on Dukes Highway and Port Wakefield Road since July last year and on Victor Harbour Road since June this year. Two more

While quite common in smartphones and personal computers, remote over-the-air (OTA) software updates are still only in their infancy in the automotive space, according to a new report from IHS Automotive. The report finds that OTA software updates will eventually be a big benefit for the automotive industry due to their capacity to reduce warranty costs, potentially increase overall completion rates for software-related recalls, improve customer satisfaction by eliminating trips to the dealership for so

European Commission and Parliament officials said during a panel discussion in Brussels that they were moving towards regulating connected cars, but are still a long way off from sealing new legislation on autonomous vehicles. Major car companies have been running tests on autonomous or driverless cars over the last couple of years and some European companies have launched test drives with autonomous cars on public streets. Germany's Daimler got the go ahead this month from state authorities to drive the