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Motorists in Aberdeenshire, Scotland will soon be able to charge their electric vehicles and use solar-powered parking machines in town centres across county. Twenty of the solar-powered parking meters will be fitted at a cost of £80,000 which allows motorists to pay by cash, debit or credit card or their mobile phone. The council heard that the current parking machines are prone to theft and often break down. It was suggested that the redundant power supply from the ageing parking units could then be used

Thanks to a partnership between parking technology provider Streetline and Cisco, drivers in the San Francisco bay area of the US are now able to locate the nearest vacant parking space using just their smartphone and a mobile app called Parker. First deployed in Sausalito, the system has now been installed in San Mateo and San Carlos. It uses a small wireless sensor about the size of a golf hole installed in the parking bay to detect whether the space is occupied by a vehicle. Each sensor wirelessly comm

According to a new report from Frost and Sullivan, the European automotive navigation market will witness a shift towards integration and a continual trend towards low-cost connected navigation, which will become a commodity. With Smartphone replication technologies, Smartphone-based navigation inside cars will dominate the market, serving all car segments. The eCall in Europe and ERA-GLONASS in Russia, which mandate automated emergency response systems in vehicles, will lead to Europe becoming one of the b

According to Ertico, the future of traffic management on urban and inter-urban networks will rely on direct communication and interaction between vehicles and the infrastructure, using new technologies called cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) that support real-time exchange of traffic data. This cooperation can enable a wide range of applications such as vehicle-sourced data collection, green light and speed advice, automated hazard detection, selective vehicle priority, dynamic city logisti

Cycle-specific traffic signals, which are common in Europe and Australia, are now being introduced in the US alongside the more familiar traditional intersection control signals. At least sixteen US cities, including Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, have installed the lights, which feature a bicycle-shaped signal, according to an October study commissioned by the Oregon Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration. The study found that cyclists ca

A new intelligent transport system (ITS) has been launched as part of the Forth Replacement Crossing in Fife, Scotland, to ease congestion on the M90. The motorway management system will create a dedicated bus lane as well as carriageway variable speed limits which will be used during periods of congestion to help smooth traffic flow, reduce congestion and help make journey times more reliable. The system features seventeen new motorway overhead gantries linked to traffic sensors embedded in the carriageway

The UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has been commissioned by the Royal Oman Police (ROP) to undertake a study covering all aspects of road safety within the Sultanate of Oman. TRL’s team of experts will conduct a high level multi-sector assessment of existing road safety activity in the Sultanate. The review will evaluate the Sultanate’s road safety performance, comparing existing activities against best practice across twelve different disciplines including road safety management, safety engineeri

Switching from diesel to gas, reducing rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag and introducing more hybrid and electric vehicles are identified as key opportunities for further cutting carbon and improving efficiency in the road freight sector, according to a new report commissioned by the Transport Knowledge Transfer Network (TKTN) and the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP). The report, written by Ricardo-AEA for the project partners, focuses on the key technical opportunities, and identifies options

The European Commission has adopted a measure to ensure that by 2015 vehicles can call emergency services in the event of a crash. The Commission wants the life-saving eCall system to be fitted to all new models of cars and light vehicles from 2015. eCall automatically dials Europe's single emergency number 112 in the event of a serious accident and communicates the vehicle's location to the emergency services. According to some estimates, eCall could speed emergency response times by 40per cent in urban ar

A new public remote charging service launched in the US by electric vehicle (EV) charging company SemaConnect enables drivers to quickly charge their electric vehicles by simply logging on to SemaConnect with their smartphone. The service can be used 24/7 and does not require drivers to swipe a credit card. EV drivers can access the new feature when visiting a SemaConnect ChargePro station by visiting the SemaConnect website via their smartphone and selecting “start charging now.” They then enter the statio

French company Diginext is to supply Lille transport operator, Transpole, with its MobilitX multimodal traveller information system for Lille Central Station. Using the latest European standards for interoperability MobilitX integrates real time information from all traffic and transport systems in the city, to provide full travel information, regardless of the mode of transport.

US-headquartered WABCO has introduced what it says is the next step in advanced driver assistance systems with OnLane technology, a lane departure warning system (LDWS) for trucks and buses. OnLane increases vehicle safety by providing the driver with visual and acoustic warnings or an optional seat-vibration warning, in case of unintentional lane departure, which is one of the most common causes of accidents involving commercial vehicles. OnLane integrates a camera and an electronic control unit into a sin

The twin-bore Hindhead tunnel in southern England has made the A3 London to Portsmouth route safer and more efficient, aided by the large overview video wall and operator consoles installed in the control room by Electrosonic, working with main contractor Balfour Beatty Engineering Services for the Highways Agency. To meet the Highways Agency’s requirement that the control room should operate in a similar way to other traffic control rooms on the major road network, Electrosonic devised a solution based on

The UK Government has announced an investment of £9 million (US$14.4 million) with a further £4 million (US$6.3 million) from industry into a new Energy Storage R&D Centre which will work to accelerate the development of the next generation of batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills hopes that the new centre, which will be based at the University of Warwick, will help the UK to capitalise on the growing electric and hybrid vehicle battery market, which

The government of New Zealand aims to improve road safety in the country by installing more speed cameras nationwide. Currently, the ratio of speed cameras per 100,000 people stands at 1.3 compared to 2.5 and 4.8 in the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria respectively. The New Zealand Transport Agency is to be allocated US$8.05 million to increase the number of speed cameras from the existing 55 units to 100 or more by 2015. Associate Transport Minister Simon Bridges welcomed plans to increase