News

Melbourne-based toll-road operator Transurban Group has announced that the consortium Lend Lease Bouygues is set to design and build the Sydney, Australia, NorthConnex tunnel link between the M1 and M2 motorways in the city’s northwest. The nine kilometre, 80 km/h tolled link involves two motorway tunnels, built with a three lane capacity for future growth but initially marked for two lanes each way. It provides the missing link in the National Highway Network and offers a safe and more efficient way of

Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has approved plans for a bridge to connect the luxury Bluewaters Island tourism project with the mainland. Dubai's transport authority said the US$136 million construction contract for the bridge, which will have two lanes in each direction and will be 1,400 metres long, will be awarded in the second quarter of this year. Mattar Al Tayer, chairman and executive director of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), said: "The new bridge will serve the ne

UK communities secretary Eric Pickles will announce in April 2014 that local authorities will be prohibited from using CCTV cameras for enforcement of parking regulations. Static and mobile CCTV cameras are used by at least 75 councils to catch people not returning to their vehicles before the meter expires, with 9 million parking fines issued per year, according to estimates. Pickles has proposed controversial reforms to local authority parking enforcement, including banning the use of CCTV, saying h

Singapore is trialling average speed cameras on the Changi coastal road, which has been the site of many accidents, despite the speed limit being sent to 70 km/hour. Spot speed cameras have been in use since 1992, but motorists will have a much harder time evading the new technology, which calculates a vehicle's average speed over a stretch to determine if it is breaching the speed limit. The cameras are mounted on gantries at two different locations about four kilometres apart. Singapore Road Saf

Thousands of cars will be banned from Parisian roads today as the city tries to curb dangerous pollution levels by introducing alternate driving days for the first time in nearly two decades. The radical move will see around 700 police officers deployed to man 60 checkpoints around the French capital to ensure that only cars with number plates ending in odd numbers are on the streets. Parking will be free for vehicles with even number plates, the Paris city hall said, calling on residents to consult

Research and Markets’ latest report, Global Intelligent Transportation Systems Market - Forecasts to 2016 finds that one of the main trends witnessed in the global intelligent transportation systems market is the increasing Government initiatives. For instance, the US Department of Transportation is planning to conduct a real-world test of smart vehicles. This test will include vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. In addition, under the Pennsylvania Community Transportation Initia

Used until now in vehicle exterior lighting primarily for daytime running lights, tail lights, indicators, automotive supplier Continental claims light-emitting diodes (LEDs) now provide sufficient luminosity to function as low-beam or high-beam lights as well in irradiating the vehicle surroundings. LEDs offer numerous advantages over halogen or xenon lights. They are more efficient and offer a higher degree of safety. The light emitted by the LED is more like sunlight than other light sources and is t

BT has signed a contract with multinational space service company Telespazio, a Finmeccanica/Thales company, to provide new network services for EGNOS, the first pan-European satellite navigation system. BT will implement and manage a high availability, ultra-resilient network to carry positioning data for safety critical applications such as those used in airline and ship navigation. The network will connect more than fifty monitoring stations, control centres and uplink locations - including remote areas

Chile's transport ministry plans to launch feasibility studies to extend three metro lines in the capital, Santiago. The plans include expanding the north-south line 2 south towards El Bosque and San Bernardo neighbourhoods and line 3, currently under construction, north to Quilicura, according to transport minister Andrés Gómez-Lobo. The other proposal is to expand further south line 4, which connects Santiago's eastern neighbourhood of Providencia with the town of Puente Alto to the southeast of the

According to the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT UK) the decision by Liverpool’s Mayor and council to suspend all of the city’s bus lanes in a nine month trial was rushed through and based on evidence that was flawed and suffered from a severe data deficit. Furthermore, it could even deter other local authorities around Britain from introducing measures that promote public transport to ease urban traffic congestion. The Institute believes that the evidence used by the Mayor and Coun

Image Sensing Systems (ISS) has added the Autoscope RTMS Sx-300 to its traffic management product range, providing accurate, advanced vehicle detection, and the ability to detect up to 12 lanes of simultaneous detection, reporting vehicle presence as well as volume, occupancy, speed and classification information. The device provides a fully automated set-up feature that self-detects and self-calibrates detection zones, providing users with a simple and cost effective installation process. The combi

With just over two months to go until the ITF Annual Summit on "Transport for a Changing World" on 21-23 May in Leipzig, Germany, additional speakers are being confirmed day-by-day. Joining ministers from the Forum's 54 members and over 20 invited countries will be: Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse. The initiator, chairman and Pilot of solar impulse, the project to fly a solar powered aircraft around the world, will deliver a keynote speech at the "Sustainable Transport for All" plenary session on 23 May;

Rear cameras are more effective than parking sensors at helping drivers avoid objects while travelling in reverse, but they don't help in every situation, a new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) study shows. The study, conducted with volunteer drivers in an empty parking lot in the Los Angeles area, indicates that cameras would help prevent more reversing crashes into pedestrians in the vehicle's blind zone than parking sensors. Surprisingly, cameras by themselves worked better than sensors a

The longest road tunnel in Europe will be built along the new 65 kilometre stretch of the Struma highway in Bulgaria. Two tunnels, totalling almost 37 kilometres, will be built underneath the Kresna gorge between the towns of Blagoevgrad and Sandanski. The 150 kilometre Struma highway runs from the village of Daskalovo to the Greek border and is part of the Pan-European Transport Corridor IV and the Trans-European North-South Highway. The tunnels are required for environmental reasons and will be

Drivers in Abu Dhabi will shortly have to change their driving habits and refrain from slowing down as they approach a speed camera and speeding up once they have passed it. By the end of the year Abu Dhabi’s main roads will have average speed camera systems, or point to point systems, that calculate the average speed of a vehicle between two fixed points. “Everyone travelling here in Abu Dhabi has to make sure to drive within the speed limit,” Dr Atef Garib, a roads and traffic expert at Abu Dhabi Po