News

ITS Canada has announced another capacity conference well in advance of the event. Some 40 exhibitors and 300 delegates will gather in Vancouver, British Columbia from 12-15 for ITS Canada's 14th Annual Conference and General Meeting.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has formed a cross-sector Electric Vehicles Standards Panel (EVSP) and is seeking participants with relevant expertise and interest to begin the critical work of developing a standardisation roadmap to enable the safe, mass deployment of electric vehicles and associated infrastructure in the United States. The goal is to develop version one of the roadmap this year.

FedEx Express says it has made significant progress towards its goal to make its vehicle fleet 20 per cent more fuel efficient by 2020, and announced that its vehicle fleet is now 16.6 per cent more fuel efficient through FY2011 than it was in 2005. Twenty per cent of the FedEx Express diesel vehicle pickup and delivery fleet has already been converted to more efficient and cleaner emission models that comply with 2010 US Environmental Protection Agency diesel emission standards.

The new Richmond Airport connector link road is now open to traffic. The link provides a direct connection from the Pocahontas 895 highway to Richmond International Airport and cuts journey time on this route. This 2.5km road is an extension of the Pocahontas 895 highway and links directly to Airport Drive at Charles City Road. The new road can save drivers around 10 minutes or more on a trip to the airport, especially those coming from Chesterfield County and the Tri-Cities area. Customers using the Airpor

PTV AG has announced that it will be presenting the next generation of trip planning solutions at Transport Logistic 2011 being held next week in Munich, Germany (www.transportlogistic.de). According to the company, this high-end planning software visualises complex transport processes, enables cooperative planning within the team of schedulers and joint scheduling of different types of transport in one single system.

Led by the Centre for Transport Studies at Imperial College London and involving a range of industrial partners, Concerto – which stands for Co-operative Networked Concept for Emission Responsive Traffic Operations – is a three-year research programme that aims to use the sophisticated test environment of the innovITS Advance city circuit to develop next-generation technologies that reduce motor vehicle emissions.

ATX Group has announced it will provide turnkey network solutions to Hyundai Motor America as the telematics services developer and integrator for its new Blue Link connected vehicle programme using cellular service from Aeris Communications. a leading cellular carrier to the connected vehicle marketplace in North America. Hyundai announced the Blue Link telematics programme last week and it will launch on all future Hyundai models in the US beginning this spring on the Sonata.

Jaime Lerner, visionary urban planner from Brazil and pioneer of globally successful public transport ideas, is the winner of the first Leadership in Transport Award, created by the International Transport Forum, at the OECD, an intergovernmental organisation for the transport sector that comprises 52 member countries. The award was conceived to honour public figures that have, through exceptional vision and leadership, made a lasting positive impact, resulting in major advances for transport.

Bombardier Transportation has signed a contract with Saudi Arabian construction company, Saudi Binladin Group, to design, build, operate and maintain a Bombardier Innovia APM 300 automated people mover system for the King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) development project in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The total value of the contract is US$96 million.

Toyota is launching a new, advanced safety research centre that will collaborate with leading North American universities, hospitals, research institutions, federal agencies and other organisations on projects aimed at reducing the number of traffic fatalities and injuries on America's roads. Toyota's new Collaborative Safety Research Centre (CSRC) will be based at the Toyota Technical Centre (TTC) in Ann Arbor, Michigan and will involve Toyota researchers and engineers from North America and Japan. The com

A new advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), developed by Iteris in partnership with Audiovox Electronics, has been unveiled at the 2011 International Consumer Electronic Show being held in Las Vegas this week. The new system, which is expected to be available later this year, provides consumers an opportunity to benefit from life-saving features that were previously only available on new premium cars or commercial Class 8 trucks. It incorporates Iteris’ proven AutoVue Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and Fo

For the first time ever, the number of road deaths in France fell under the threshold of 4,000 in 2010, a 6.5 per cent drop year on year, the Interior ministry announced yesterday. According to provisional data from the road safety department, 3,994 people were killed in road accidents in 2010, the equivalent of almost 300 lives saved on 2009. After years of decline, road deaths reached 4,273 in 2009. Road injuries in 2010 also recorded a sharp fall, down by 13.1 per cent.

AT&T has announced an agreement with BMW to wirelessly deliver an enhanced suite of safety and infotainment services to future BMW models. These enhancements build on BMW's existing portfolio of connected services – known as BMW Assist – which includes, among others features, direct access to emergency and concierge call centre services, traffic information and an online portal for weather forecasts, fuel prices, and news.

US Traffic Corporation has been awarded a procurement contract by the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC-DOT) to provide advanced solid-state traffic control devices to expand system upgrades across the city. The agreement calls for the company to supply traffic control cabinets, intersection signal controllers, as well as related software and hardware over the next several years to replace aging electromechanical controller systems throughout New York City.

Cellcontrol, a specialist in technology to stop distracted driving, is actively addressing the growing domestic and international demand for reliable distracted driving technology by pursuing and receiving regulatory approval to market its solution in Europe and other geographies. After extended testing by independent organizations, Cellcontrol received the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) E11 Certification last week. This VCA certification is required for EU market participation and validates that Cellco