News

Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is to install 100 new radar speed-camera stations, twenty-four of which will be activated by Dubai Police in May. The new cameras include systems installed at traffic signals to catch drivers who speed up to catch the green light or jump a red light. In 2011, more than 1.5 million speeding offences were recorded by radar cameras, the Dubai Statistics Centre reported. That figure represented a leap of about 115,000 on the previous year, when 1.4 million speeding

Following the success of the first Delft Road Safety Course for low and middle-income countries, the 2013 course is to be held in Delft in the Netherlands from 15 to 29 September 2013. The course is a joint initiative of Delft University of Technology, the Post Graduate Education (PAO) and the Road Safety for All Foundation and focuses on educating professionals in the field of road safety in low and middle-income countries. The SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research joins this initiative in 2013. Profes

UK-based provider of traffic enforcement software StarTraq is to supply North Yorkshire Police (NYP) with its safety camera back office solution Dome (Dynamic Offence Management and Enforcement) to administer the increased number of traffic violations in the region more efficiently. According to StarTraq, the robust and scalable Dome software will automate several processes and thereby reduce the chance of human error to a minimum. In addition, the significant decrease in manual and administrative activiti

Enforcement systems provider Vitronic has won two significant fixed and mobile enforcement contracts in Dubai and Iraqi Kurdistan. Dubai Police has recently awarded the company a fur­ther contract for fixed traffic enforcement systems, including PoliScan speed enforcement, combined red light and speed enforcement systems, and vio­lation processing software. The stationary PoliScan speed systems monitor all ve­hicles in the surveillance zone equally, regardless of their posi­tion on the road. The systems in

Dutch technical services provid­er Royal Imtech has announced the write-off of at least €100m in Poland after the discovery of “possible irregularities” in four of its projects there. The discovery relates to three projects for Adventure World Warsaw and one project involving energy-generating bio-power stations in Warsaw with a combined value of €757m. It is understood that advance payments for the four projects did not comply with the agreements made between Im­tech and its customer in terms of the availa

A group of leading industry professionals has written to the US National Telecom­munications & Information Administration (NTIA) to ask for a rethink, following the announcement by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that the 5.9GHz band is to be opened up for spectrum sharing. The group, led by ITS America president and CEO Scott Belcher, includes senior academics, automotive manu­facturers, ITS system suppliers and a number of US state departments of transportation such as those of Michigan, Texas

Norwegian toll technology provider Q-Free has secured two new contracts worth a combined US$7.5m to supply toll tags to toll concessionaires in Chile and Brazil.Vespucio Norte Express in Chile has placed a US$3.4m order for the firm’s OBU610 toll tags, with delivery to start this May. Q-Free is also to supply tags to the value of US$4.1m to Centro Gestao Meios de Pagto (CGMP) in Brazil. One of the first urban concessionaires in Santiago, Vespucio Norte Express is one of the most modern road connections worl

Police in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, are to begin using speed cameras around local schools on weekdays between six in the morning and eight at night. For the first thirty days, only warnings will be issued; after that motorists caught driving as twelve mph or more over the speed limit will get a US$40 citation in the mail. Initially, the cameras will only patrol two schools, but more will be added every two weeks, with the goal of all of them being patrolled by May. Not all of the designated areas will have

Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has replaced the old high-pressure-sodium (HPS) lighting system along Highway 101 with the state’s first light-emitting-diode (LED) lighting system. “This is the first time we’ve used LED lights on a state highways and for most drivers, it will be quite a change,” said John Nisbet, WSDOT state traffic engineer. “LED lights appear whiter and brighter than our standard lights. And those who travel the area late at night will see some lights dimmed or shut

The fifth and final webinar of the AERIS Fall//Winter 2012-2013 Webinar Series will take place on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 1:00 pm EST. The webinar will describe the results of a recent connected vehicle field experiment performed in two locations (University of California at Riverside and the Turner Fairbank Highway Research Center). Complementary modelling results will also be described. The field experiment was conducted in August 2012 and was based on the AERIS Program's Eco-Approach and Departure a

Gatso’s T-Series based Millia in-vehicle speed enforcement solution has been type approved by the French Laboratoire national de métrologie et d’essais (LNE) for use in France. According to Gatso, its Millia solutions reduce speed related crashes by enforcing the speed limit. For in-vehicle use, the system components are integrated into an enforcement vehicle without altering the appearance of the vehicle. Depending on the chosen strategy, the operator can choose to enforce approaching or receding traffic o

Two new managed toll lanes being built on nine miles of the César Chávez Border Highway Loop 375 in El Paso, Texas are expected to increase capacity and reduce traffic congestion in the area thanks to a managed lane free flow tolling system to be supplied by Schneider Electric. The company has been selected by the Camino Real Regional Mobility Authority (CRRMA) to provide tolling system integration and maintenance services on the two new managed lanes. In order to operate and support the additional toll la

Responding to requests for change from many exhibitors, and after discussions with the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA), Messe Stuttgart has decided to move the Vision to a biennial cycle with immediate effect, which means that the Vision exhibition will take place in 2014. The reason for this change is attributed to the fact that, although the show had been successful for many years, this success was in jeopardy due to the change of date from November to September and the fact that some major exh

In a contract worth US$59 million, German telematics specialist Init is to supply a fleet management system for iBus, one of the largest public transport projects in Canada currently being launched by Société de Transport de Montréal (STM). STM, the main transit authority in the second most important economic region in Canada is modernising and enhancing its operations over the next few years. At the heart of this is a fleet management and real-time passenger information system with state-of-the-art vehicle

South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has launched a zero emission electric vehicle pilot programme, which would see it trial a fleet of electric vehicles. Speaking at the launch, water and environmental affairs minister Edna Molewa said the multi-stakeholder partnership project would pilot, test and demonstrate the viability of electric vehicles under South African conditions. The pilot programme would also serve to determine end-user, infrastructure and running costs associated with loc