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The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) has announced the winners of the 2015 Toll Excellence Award competition that recognises excellence, innovation and achievement in the tolling industry. “This year’s submissions were particularly innovative,” said Patrick D. Jones, executive director and CEO of IBTTA. “There were many great examples of projects highlighting new ideas and emerging practices throughout the international tolling industry. A new category, Private Sector Innova

KPMG has criticised the UK Chancellor for lack of investment in regional transport infrastructure in his Summer Budget 2015. Chris Hearld, chairman for KPMG in the North, said: “Once again we have seen the Northern Powerhouse being a key plank to the Chancellor’s Budget announcement. We have always maintained that for the Northern Powerhouse to succeed, all parts of the region need to be brought on board, so it was encouraging to hear that following the lead set by Manchester, devolution deals are in the

TransCore has unveiled new technology that will provide motorists with access to any toll road throughout the US, eliminating the need for a toll tag on the windshield. TransCore’s Universal Toll Module (UTM) multi-protocol toll tag is designed to be integrated into the vehicle manufacturing process rather than an after-market application. Because the UTM functions on all US toll roads, motorists will no longer need to cover their windshields with various types of toll tags for different regions of t

Siemens is switching 9,000 street lights to LED technology in the US city of Manchester in New Hampshire. Some 4,500 lamps have already been refitted and the work should be completed by the end of September. Siemens will also be responsible for service and maintenance work. Siemens says LED technology reduces power consumption by 60 per cent and will bring the city considerable financial benefits, with annual savings of US$500,000 in terms of energy and maintenance costs such as replacing light bulbs.

Heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) will soon be able to fill up close to junction 28 on the M6 in Lancashire as CNG Fuels has secured planning permission for the UK's largest CNG filling station which should be open in late 2015. According to CNG Fuels, the new station will be the first high pressure connected, public-access CNG filling station in the UK, capable of refuelling five hundred plus HGVs per day, or as much as 3,500 kg of CNG per hour. CNG dispensed from local

Working in partnership with BusTech, Swinburne University of Technology has helped develop the first electric bus to be designed, engineered and manufactured in Australia. The first concept demonstrator bus was unveiled at the Maintenance Conference and Bus Expo in Melbourne. According to Pro vice-chancellor, International Research Engagement, Professor Ajay Kapoor, the research and development has involved solving the challenges of integrating electric vehicle technologies using computer-aided engi

Global Traffic Technology (GTT), the US-based company behind the Opticom emergency vehicle pre-emption (EVP) and transit signal priority (TSP) and Canoga traffic sensing products, has embarked on a major initiative to expand international sales outside of North America. More than 3,000 first response users of EVP system report improvements in response times of up to 25 per cent and a 70 per cent reduction in crashes. And according to company CEO Doug Roberts, initial feedback from the transit schedule ad

Tollaust, a subsidiary of toll road operator Transurban Group, has awarded Egis the contract for the management of incident response services of the Lane Cove Tunnel and the M2 motorway in Sydney, Australia. The contract commences at the beginning of October 2015 and will run for three years. The 21 kilometre M2 motorway and the 3.6 kilometre twin tunnel Lane Cove Tunnel are two urban motorways linking the M1 motorway and the fast-growing north-west suburbs of Sydney. Traffic on these two motorway se

Iteris is to carry out upgrades to traffic signal infrastructure and signal timing improvements along an eight-mile stretch of a major corridor spanning three California cities: Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, and Newport Beach under a US$2.1 million contract awarded by the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). Under the project agreement, Iteris will design and implement traffic signal electronics and fibre-optic communications equipment, and will synchronise all 45 traffic lights along the entire Brist

According to the latest research by RnR Market Research, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) has been one of the fastest-growing sectors in automotive field and is expected to register a CAGR of 32 per cent during 2014-2019. Currently, developed countries in Europe and America have had nearly eight per cent of new vehicles equipped with ADAS, in contrast to about two per cent in emerging markets. It is predicted that over 25 per cent of new vehicles will carry ADAS by 2019 globally. The Global a

The Smart Cities 2015 Award, presented by the Socinfo Foundation and Sociedad de la Información magazine, has been awarded to the Pozuelo de Alarcón, Spain, smart city project. The award was given for a project that consists of four integrated systems: smart irrigation, street lighting, energy efficiency and smart parking. Wireless parking specialist Nedap played a part in the project, installing the intelligent parking system using its Sensit wireless parking sensors that detect the occupancy of a park

The Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) has selected a joint venture of Johnson, Mirmiran and Thompson (JMT) and Parsons Brinckerhoff as general engineering consultant for the replacement of the Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge. The bridge, also known as the Potomac River Bridge, is a 1.7-mile (2.7 km), two-lane continuous truss bridge on US 301 that spans the Potomac River between Newburg in Maryland and Dahlgren in Virginia. The US$1 billion programmed budget involves replacing the existing structure

RATP Dev, via its subsidiary RATP El Djazaïr, has launched the Algiers metro line 1 extension, which it hopes will facilitate mobility in the greater Algiers region. The 12 kilometre line, which boasts 14 trains with six air-conditioned carriages, has three new stations and now connects the former Haï El Badr terminus to the El Harrach Centre station in the south-east of the city. The extension will eventually feature four new stations when the El Harrach station opens. Passenger numbers have risen e

ANI, Colombia’s national infrastructure agency, has awarded the SAC 4G consortium a US$898 million contract to design, build, finance and operate the 176 km Autopista al Mar 1 motorway over 25 years. The consortium comprises Austrian construction group Strabag, Spain’s Sacyr and Concay of Colombia. The project, in the Department of Antioquia in north-western Colombia and will link Medellín, the capital of Antioquia, with the cities of San Jerónimo and Santa Fe de Antioquia before continuing to Bolombo

The first US pay-per-mile road charging program went into operation in Oregon last week. OReGO is currently limited to 5,000 vehicles statewide; participants will pay 1.5 cents per mile while driving in Oregon and receive a credit on their bill for state gas tax paid at the pump. ODOT is asking participants for feedback and suggestions for improving OReGO along the way. "The doors are now open for Oregonians to enrol their vehicles and test-drive OReGO statewide," said Vicki Berger, chair of Oregon's