News

Imtech Traffic & Infra has recently been awarded the contract to provide sustainable LED lighting for the Public Lighting project in the municipality of Texel in the Netherlands. Imtech will remove all public lighting outside the villages and replace it with passive and active markers. The active markers will be in the form of sustainable LED lighting in the roads, running on solar energy. The road surface will still remain visible, and the impact on the surrounding fauna is said to be zero/nil. Withi

A report released this week by road safety charity Brake and Direct Line has revealed that nearly half of UK drivers (49 per cent) admit to breaking traffic laws. Of those, half say they do so through inattention, while the other half admit to doing so deliberately, because they think they can get away with it or do not agree with the laws. When asked what unsafe driving behaviour they witnessed most, 71 per cent cited distraction such as from mobile phones, followed by tailgating speeding (67 per ce

A team of senior electrical and computer engineers from Rice University in Houston, Texas, has developed a new parking technology called ParkiT, with the aim of making it easier to find a parking space in a crowded car park. The team claims the new system is cheaper than sensor technology currently being used and would provide car park managers and attendants with real time information on available parking spaces. That information could then be shared with drivers through electronic signs or a driver-fri

The European Parliament has voted to adopt the eCall type-approval legislation, mandating emergency call technology as a standard feature in all new vehicles from 2018. Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) Region I has welcomed the outcome, while also regretting the three-year delay in implementation. Thierry Willemarck, president of FIA Region I, said: “Road safety has triumphed today. eCall has finally passed through all the necessary steps and will become mandatory in 2018. However, I hope

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is to supply equipment for an electronic toll collection (ETC) system to be used on an expressway in Vietnam, including 50,000 on-board units for automobiles and antennas for use at toll gates. The ETC system will be introduced on the 55-kilometre Ho Chi Minh City to Dau Giay section of the route from Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. The system uses active-type dedicated short-range communication (active DSRC), the standard ETC system specification i

Wireless solutions supplier Intuicom, in conjunction with Econolite Canada, has been awarded the Wireless Traffic Communications Project for the City of North Vancouver, Canada. The contract includes the supply, installation, configuration, testing and training of the complete wireless system for the City and integrates the City’s IP-based traffic signal controllers while providing centralised monitoring and management of the entire traffic network from the City’s traffic management centre. Intuicom

A new study by the Northeast Group says there are currently more than 2,000 LED and smart streetlight projects globally. With these infrastructure projects, cities and municipalities across the world modernise their streetlights with more efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lights. They are also deploying sensors, communications and analytics software throughout their street lighting infrastructure and creating smart cities. This is a key segment of the emerging Internet of Things. Rapidly falling costs an

The US toll road industry is gathering in Portland this week to discuss road usage charging (RUC), the mechanism that allows drivers to pay by the mile for their use of roads. Opening the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association’s (IBTTA) Transportation Financing and Road Usage Charging Conference, Patrick Jones, executive director, said a ‘sea change in thinking’ was needed to help find stable sources of funding for surface transportation. Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer told conferen

The Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) is to install advanced wrong-way driving detection systems, beginning this week, at 24 locations across the state. The systems will both alert a driver who is travelling in the wrong direction as well as notify police and other motorists in the area of a potential wrong-way driver. The new detection systems will sense if a driver has entered a highway off-ramp and activate a series of flashing signs. It will also notify the Rhode Island State Police

Oregon’s new pay-by-the-mile road usage charge program, OReGO, took a step forward Monday, as state officials announced that three private business partners are now technically certified to manage accounts and collect road user fees from those accounts for deposit into the State Highway Fund. “Oregon is pioneering the nation’s first pay-by-the-mile road usage charge system. We now have three trusted private partners on board — Azuga, Sanef and Verizon Telematics — that Oregonians can choose from when the

The Board of Directors of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), has named Regina Hopper president and chief executive officer effective from 18 May 2015. Hopper is a veteran executive of major Washington industry associations. Her experience in public policy advocacy, communications, media and law spans the transportation, telecommunications and energy industries. She most recently served as president and CEO of America’s Natural Gas Alliance where she built operations from the

Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF) and Toyota Motor Thailand (TMT) will partner with Chulalongkorn University (Chula) on a pilot traffic and congestion management project on the heavily-congested Sathorn Road, Bangkok, Thailand. The project, which will take an estimated eighteen months to complete, from April 2015 –to December 2016, and a US$3.4 million investment, will create a road map to manage traffic control and flow by focusing on four areas. These include the developing sustainable shuttle bus and p

A new rail signalling system to be installed across the UK could be liable to hacking, a government adviser has warned. Professor David Stupples told the BBC that the European Rail Traffic Management system (ERTMS) could be exposed to malicious software, or malware, and used to cause an accident perhaps telling the system the train is slowing when down when it is speeding up. "However, he said governments aren't complacent."Certain ministers know this is absolutely possible and they are worried about

D’Artagnan Consulting has been awarded a four-year contract by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) as the State of California seeks to implement one of the nation’s most ambitious per-mile road charging study and pilot efforts to date. D’Artagnan is providing direct support to Caltrans to achieve the objectives of 2014 legislation which directed a study to implement, evaluate, and report back to lawmakers on a pilot test of road charging methods before the end of June 2018. In the

New technology which communicates between traffic signals and motorists to help the way they drive is being rolled out across Newcastle as part of a joint cooperative project with Siemens. In the first pilot of its kind in the UK, the system links an in-vehicle communication system directly with the city’s urban traffic management centre (UTMC), the infrastructure will ‘communicate’ directly with motorists, giving certain vehicles priority at junctions. Initially, the system has been fitted to non-emerge