News

Houston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (Metro) working with prime contractor TransCore has commissioned the first of five reversible high occupancy toll (HOT) lane corridors. One of the most substantial undertakings of its kind to date in the United States, Metro’s conversion of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to HOT lanes will increase utilization of the HOV system and subsequently relieve congestion in the general purpose freeway lanes. When completed, the programme will span 135kms

Highway surveying company Yotta DCL has signed a four year contract worth around US$3.61 million with the UK Highways Agency to survey and monitor some 140,000km of motorway and other major roads across England. As part of the agreement, the company DCL will perform a traffic speed condition survey (TRACS) to determine the condition of the road surface, assess the areas in particular need of repair and determine where immediate action needs to be taken. The company will use its new state-of-the art Tempest

Swedish company Edeva, which was hived off from Prodelox, has successfully tested a new traffic calming method in Linköping, Sweden. The technology, called Actibump, monitors traffic approaching a dangerous junction and if cars are exceeding the speed limit a metal trough is activated in the road that cars then bounce over. The trough is six centimeters deep, which the developers say is deep enough for drivers to notice but does not cause any physical damage to either the car or its occupants. Edeva says Ac

Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) has installed the country’s first vehicleactuated wirelesss traffic signal controller (Wi-TraC) at a busy junction in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of India’s Kerala state. Developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), the premier R&D organization of the Department of Information Technology, and manufactured and installed by major Indian electronics corporation, Keltron, Wi-TraC has distinct features over conventional signals. The camera in the system c

A traffic centre aimed at dealing with traffic congestion will be set up in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh (HCM) City. The project will involve the construction of a traffic control centre to manage buses, the traffic light system and the installation of traffic equipment at over 1,000 crossroads. The project, which will cost an estimated US$187 million, will be carried out in three phases between 2012 and 2017.

When Indian toll concessionaire LT selected Telegra to provide customized toll solutions for 180 toll lanes within 16 toll stations located on seven highway sections, the company was presented with a range of challenges. For instance, classifying more than 50 different types of vehicles, grouping them in only 12 categories, all in real-time with 99.6% reliability rate. That challenge was solved using an automatic vehicle classification (AVC) system based on AI Beam Curtain. This Dream Workshop product by T

In February, ITS International learned that Gatso had just begun secret trials in the US of a new camera system. From a photograph, the radical modern new design of the cabinet suggested that the interior components were likely to have been upgraded. When Timo Gatsonides, managing director of the company, agreed to an exclusive interview with news editor James Foster about what we had seen, that upgrade assumption proved to be an understatement. The Gatso T-series platform, which will be unveiled to the wo

TomTom has announced the availability of its latest map products for the Asia Pacific region, delivering new coverage and features for automotive, enterprise and government customers. The company’s maps now cover 51 countries and territories throughout Asia Pacific, with navigable coverage for 15 countries across eight million kilometres of roads.

Liikennevirasto, the body responsible for the management, development and maintenance of the Finnish railway network, has announced Europe's largest train identification system with passive RFID covering the whole of Finnish state rail network. Vilant has won a contract to install 120 specialised RFID reader units, and integrate them into Liikennevirasto's detector network.

Easi-Set Worldwide has announced that its J-J Hooks barrier system has successfully passed both bolted-down and pinned-down MASH Test Level 3 crash tests (MASH - Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware), out-performing other comparable systems. The tests were performed by the Texas Transportation Institute.

Audi achieved a technological milestone in motorsport at the 80th running of the famous Le Mans 24 Hours in France when its hybrid drive vehicle, the Audi R18 e-tron quattro, triumphed for the first time. The four competing Audi R18 cars were the quickest and most reliable vehicles and after 24 hours occupied positions one, two, three and five.

DERSA, the national roads company in Brazil, has awarded HTS a contract for over 30 licence plate recognition (LPR) systems to be deployed on seven coastal ferry crossings in order to monitor vehicles as they pass in and out of the entry and exit gates. The company will supply the entire project turnkey which includes LPR cameras, security cameras, video analytics, electrical infrastructure, and communications.

The US Department of Transportation's Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) is hosting a free public webinar on Tuesday 10 July, 2012 from 1:00pm-2:30pm ET, to discuss the new features found in Version 7.0 of the National ITS Architecture and the new version of the Turbo Architecture Software as a part of the Talking Technology and Transportation (T3) webinar series.

In line with a new proposal, the local municipality Budapest, the Hungarian capital, will be able to collect a congestion charge from motorists for using its roads. The bill enables the introduction of variable charges for different kinds of vehicles and zones in the city. Istvan Tarlos, mayor of Budapest, has said that motorists entering the city centre would be required to pay a one-off congestion charge of between US$1.70 and $2.00. However, the borders of the planned congestion zone are still under disp

Trapeze Group has purchased Bacchus Management Holdings, the parent company of Bacchus Management Systems based in Brisbane, Australia, which provides integrated operations and financial management, ticketing and RTPI (real-time passenger information) solutions to the passenger transport industry. The company’s core product is TIMS, a comprehensive integrated transport solution for bus and road transport operations. Bacchus clients include major operators in bus and coach transport across Australia and New