News

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 0.1 million 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 (NZTA) is to be allocated US$8.05mn to increase the number of speed cameras from the existing 55 units to 100 or more by 2015.

A third round of funding for low-carbon buses has been announced by the Scottish government. A total of £3 million (US£4.7 million) will be available to bus operators under the Green Bus Fund 3 scheme. Keith Brown, Scottish transport minister, said the first two rounds helped nine operators introduce 74 new eco-friendly buses. Lothian Buses, which secured funds in an earlier round, said its new ADL Enviro 400H hybrids are 56.7% more fuel efficient than the old buses they replaced.

Kapsch TrafficCom IVHS is to supply the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) with their IDS 2.0 integrated incident detection system (IDS) for the Washburn Tunnel in Houston, Texas, the south’s largest and first toll-free vehicular tunnel. The non-invasive detection system will be linked to 14 fixed roadway cameras for incident direction for two-way traffic in the vehicular tunnel and up to six infrared intrusion detection cameras in the ventilation tunnel, enabling tunnel operators to provide cost-e

California's Bay Area Climate Collaborative (BACC) and Swarco Traffic Americas are to collaborate to advance the market for energy efficient, adaptive lighting technologies through the Bay Area Next Generation Streetlight Initiative, a region-wide project to upgrade 200,000+ municipal street lights to advanced light-emitting diode (LED) technology.

Zenith Hygiene Group is saving almost 600 tonnes of CO2 a year with TomTom fleet management technology, enabled by Vodafone, according to independent research. Zenith’s estimated 597-tonne saving was achieved with TomTom’s tracking, navigation and ecoPlus devices installed across its vehicle fleet. The vehicles use Vodafone’s global machine-to-machine services which enable businesses to connect, monitor and manage devices across the world.

Large scale, real-life, high profile V2V and V2I trials in both the United States and Germany are are catching the headlines, putting ITS in the limelight after more than a decade of procrastination, according to ABI research. The US DoT Safety Pilot program involves 3,000 vehicles in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In Germany, 120 vehicles in the simTD project (Safe Intelligent Mobility, test- field Germany) will roam the Rhine-Main region until the end of the year and will be focused on traffic, road safety, and ef

Moxa has equipped Taiwan’s Hsuehshan Tunnel with its NPort 5230 device servers and EDS-508A-SS-SC Ethernet switches as part of the tunnel emergency traffic control system. The tunnel is south east Asia's second longest road tunnel and comprises three independent tunnels (one pilot tunnel, one West-bound tunnel, and one east-bound tunnel) stretching 12.9 kilometers through Hsuehshan Mountain, the second highest mountain in East Asia.

Swedish authorities are to install a further 600 new speed cameras will in a bid to tackle a rising number of speeding offences. Ylva Berg, coordinator at the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket), said that while the rise in speeding has been just under 1 per cent it must still be tackled as a further rise would increase the number of traffic fatalities.

With the launch of its Pro 5150 Truck Live, TomTom enables truck drivers to safely navigate throughout Europe on truck-friendly routes, avoiding dimensional, weight and hazardous materials restrictions. The device gives specially designed truck routing information based on truck type, load, height, weight, length, restrictions, and maximum speed. Using this data and a database of actual road speeds,

The New Zealand government has unveiled plans to spend US$10.3 billion on the country's land transport system over the next three years, partly funded by increases in petrol excise duty and road user charges. Transport minister Gerry Brownlee said the programme was the largest of its kind in New Zealand's history and would fund transport infrastructure and services around New Zealand such as state highway improvements and the Government's "roads of national significance".

McCain, US manufacturer and supplier of intelligent transportation systems, traffic control equipment and parking guidance solutions, has successfully completed the evaluation of its latest QuicTrac adaptive control project in the City of Woodland Park, Colorado. The project ran on eight intersections along a 3.65 mile stretch of United States Highway 24 (US 24), where average daily traffic ranges from 19,000–26,000 vehicles.

Dutch traffic enforcement equipment manufacturer, Gatso, is to expand its European operations into Germany. Gatso says it has established Gatso Deutschland in order to work more closely with customers in reaching the targets of ‘Vision Zero’, as adopted by the German Road Safety Council. Area sales manager, Dietmar Schwalm, says "Being closer to our German customers makes it possible to be more engaged which results in optimised products for this progressive market.”

Tenders will shortly be issued for a proposed US$9.33 billion metro railway system in Jeddah. The metro system will consist of three main lines and 46 stations; the Orange line will be 67km long with 22 stations, the Blue line 24km with 17 stations and the Green line 17km with only seven stations.

Mitsubishi Motors North America has introduced its new roadside assistance app, enabling Mitsubishi owners to obtain quick, one-touch access to emergency dispatchers and response in an emergency, as well as automatically transmitting data about the vehicle, vehicle location, and owner. The new app, available for iPhone-compatible devices and included among the free benefits Mitusbishi dealers provide to new vehicle owners, puts drivers directly in touch with a roadside assistance agent

Taiwan's Ministry of Transportation and Communications has set aside a budget of US$333.67 million to improve public transportation from 2013 to 2016. The proposal was approved by the Council for Economic Planning and Development on 20 August 2012. The ministry aims to increase the use of public transport to 18 per cent in 2016 and three per cent in 2025, as compared to 14.3% in 2011. By the end of 2012, 90 per cent of buses in Taiwan are aimed to be equipped with multi-card readers.