News

A push by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use technology to reduce traffic fatalities aims to keep drunk drivers off the roads by using in-vehicle technology that immobilises their cars. They are pushing for systems that prevent drivers from starting their cars, help cars avoid collisions and prevent vehicles from starting if the occupants don’t wear seat belts. "Ninety per cent of all crashes have an element of human error," NHTSA administrator David Strickland said. "We really

TomTom has announced a partnership with UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. TomTom’s global Traffic Index data will be used by UN-Habitat and its stakeholders around the world to make strategic decisions when tackling urban congestion. Recently TomTom released the sixth edition of its Traffic Index which revealed a clear pattern of increased congestion. Commuters around the world are spending on average eight working days stuck in traffic. This shows that traditional responses li

From young professionals to lifetime achievers, the ITS Australia awards ceremony recognised leading industry contributors at the end of a busy 2013 event calendar. Winners were announced before more than 110 industry leaders in Melbourne last week and the Awards program was well supported with nominations from a wide cross section of industry sectors. Winners included Keith Aldridge who was posthumously awarded the Max Lay lifetime achievement award for his creative vision, passion and dedication to

A fleet of 130 virtual electric cars is set to appear on the roads of Munich, Germany, where the Technische Universität München (TUM) is to provide participating companies with smartphones that will be installed in taxis and commercial vehicles to track their movements. The phones will record the exact location of the vehicle via GPS, along with driving behaviour such as acceleration, deceleration and turns. The phone’s software will then calculate the energy consumption for a freely configured electric

Working closely with partners from Puget Sound-area transit and planning organizations to implement a multimodal-system analysis, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has produced its new Corridor Capacity Report to explain how transportation system efficiency would improve if travellers made better use of available capacity across all modes of transportation. In addition to updates on vehicle miles travelled, state-wide delay and the cost of this delay to Washingtonians, the report

A partnership between premium car manufacturer Audi and the international traffic technology group Swarco recently demonstrated their achievements in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication as part of the European Compass4D project. The demonstration in the Italian city of Verona involved connecting the city's traffic management system, which is based on Swarco's Omnia platform, with Audi's onboard navigation system. By comparing its current position, speed and driving direction, the vehicle re

International Road Dynamics (IRD) announced today that it has received a US$1.6 million contract to provide a weigh-in-Motion (WIM) sorter system for a new commercial vehicle enforcement facility (CVEF) near Mountain Pass, California. This system will be used by enforcement personnel to select and direct commercial vehicles into the CVEF. IRD will supply an integrated system including its industry-leading single load cell (SLC) WIM scales and advanced iSINC controller electronics. A total of sixteen SLC

ITS Italy will host the final event of the European COMPASS (Optimised CO-Modal PASSenger Transport for reducing carbon emissions) project. The 25-month project examined how social, economical, environmental and technological changes will affect transport and derived the key challenges for future policy and planning. Its results will be delivered at the final conference on 13 November in Rome and will include recommendations on improving data collection in passenger transport. The draft programme c

Canada has been selected to host the 2017 ITS World Congress. Three Canadian and nine American cities vied to host the conference and after lengthy deliberation the International Committee settled on Montreal. The last World Congress in Canada was in Toronto in 1999 which attracted over 5,000 delegates. ITS Canada says the Montreal Congress will be even bigger and is promising it will be a year the world of transportation will remember!

ITS America has appointed ITS United Kingdom members Finella McKenzie and Dr John Miles as editors for a revision of the PIARC ITS Handbook. PIARC is the common acronym of the World Road Association and the appointment comes under the auspices of a US Department of Transportation contract which will see the publication updated from the last (2004) edition and developed as an online knowledge resource.

ITS America’s Leadership Circle, now with 34 members strong, has staged its second Thought Leadership Forum. The two-day forum focused on innovation and the evolving role of the transportation technology ecosystem, as well as the development of a new problem-solving business model to accelerate investment in ITS technologies. The forum included sessions on creative destruction, disruptive technologies, urban mobility, industry trends, connected vehicles and infrastructure, big data challenges and emergi

More than 200 South and Southern African ITS stakeholders met at the biennial International i-Transport Conference and Exhibition to seek transport solutions that improve efficiencies and safety while reducing the carbon footprint. This year saw the event host its largest exhibition to date with both local and international exhibitors. ITS South Africa’s CEO, Dr Paul Vorster, said: “ITS deployment in South Africa is shaping up very well and with the large number of new Integrated Rapid Transport Systems

The future of the California high speed rail project hangs in the balance as a result of two rulings handed down by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny on 25 November. "The judge's ruling will prevent the [California High-Speed Rail] Authority from spending bond measure funds for construction until the funding plan is brought into compliance," said Michael Brady, co- lead attorney on the case, but because that would require finding at least US$25 billion in extra funds, Brady believes complianc

India’s Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) has developed its Comprehensive Transportation Plan-2014 for Hyderabad Metropolitan Area and a draft Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Master Plan and is seeking public comments and suggestions. The Comprehensive Transportation Plan, prepared by consultants LEA Associates, envisages a total investment of US$35 billion over the next thirty years. It includes travel demand forecasts up to the year 2041 and proposes the expansion of Metro Rai

Taiwan’s 900 kilometres of toll roads will transition to all-electronic free flow operations early next year. The roads, which include three north-south routes with 22 toll points, carry out around 1.7 million transactions a day, generating some US$700 million of annual toll revenue. Private contractor Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Company (FETC), under contract to the National Freeway Bureau to collect the tolls, says that the IR-based toll system worked well and some 43 per cent of transactio