News

Capita Symonds’ Innovations team has secured a new contract on the UK Highways Agency Traffic Information System (Hatris) programme. The contract, which is an extension to the company’s current work on the scheme, will see the team taking the project through to December 2014. The Hatris system, which has been developed and enhanced by Capita Symonds since 2005, is used to monitor and report on vehicle journey times across set routes on the UK motorway and trunk road network. This enables the Highways Agency

Chile's Public Transport Minister, Pedro Pablo Errazuriz, has announced that the government is looking to replicate the successful speed camera system that is used in France. The system captures photos of speeding cars and then sends out letters to offenders, issuing them with a fine within two days of the offence. This has enabled France to dramatically improve the safety of its roads, reducing the number of road deaths from an average of 8,000 per year in 2003 to an estimated 4,000 in 2012. The cameras ar

Dutch company PAL-V Europe has concluded test flights of its flying car, the PAL-V (Personal Air and Land Vehicle). The patented vehicle flies in the air like a gyrocopter with lift generated by an auto-rotating rotor and forward speed is produced by a foldable push propeller on the back. On the road it drives like a sports car. No new infrastructure is required because it uses existing roads and airstrips.

California’s Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) has launched the first phase of its 290km conversion of high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to Express Lanes, or commonly known as high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, with TransCore serving as lead integrator for the project. The US$11.8 million programme comes at a crucial time in Silicon Valley as it prepares for an expected 38 per cent growth in population over the next 20 years and funding for transportation improvements is projected to grow at

The International Transport Forum at the OECD, an intergovernmental organisation for the transport sector that comprises 53 countries, has announced the projects shortlisted for its 2012 Transport Achievement Award that honours transport projects that have demonstrated excellence in seamlessly connecting people, infrastructure or markets.

Three global organisations have teamed up to launch what they claim is the most comprehensive, public database of bus rapid transit (BRT) systems around the world. The new site, http://BRTdata.org, was created by Embarq, the World Resources Institute’s centre for sustainable transport, and the Across Latitudes and Cultures - Bus Rapid Transit Centre of Excellence (ALC-BRT CoE), in collaboration with the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Kapsch CarrierCom has successfully implemented the latest train security and communication technology on the first high speed line in the Galicia region in the North West of Spain. The route between Orense and Santiago covers 87 km of tracks with 29 km of tunnels through a very mountainous area. Kapsch has been the Base Station Subsystem (BSS) GSM-R system turnkey supplier including network design, network integration and optimisation to the project. The company has also supplied all site infrastructure req

Telogis has acquired the assets of Maptuit, a leading provider of connected navigation for commercial fleets. This acquisition, the company’s fifth in three years, expands its services as the market increases adoption of location-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Maptuit’s commercial navigation technologies further enhance the Telogis enterprise platform of SaaS solutions, which includes fleet management, navigation, multi-vehicle route optimisation and planning, work order management and mobil

Bosch has announced it has manufactured 75 million ESP systems since series production began in 1995 – and in the process made a vital contribution to greater road safety. Especially on slippery roads and when entering a bend too quickly, the electronic stability programme keeps vehicles safely on track. In this way, it prevents skidding accidents, which can often be particularly severe. Summarising the findings of many studies of its effectiveness, Gerhard Steiger, the president of the Bosch Chassis System

SmartDrive Systems, a specialist in fleet safety and operational efficiency, has announced the results of its Public Transit Fuel Efficiency Study, which reveals that transit fleets can reduce fuel consumption on average as much as 18.7 per cent, saving nearly US$3,400 per vehicle annually, by engaging in fuel-efficient, eco-driving best practices.

Cities all over Britain and Europe will be invited to embrace electric driving and encourage their communities to support Nissan’s campaign – ‘The Big Turn On’ – in a bid to win 30 quick chargers from the company. The quick chargers are part of a wider initiative from Nissan to get one million consumers switched onto electric driving, in just 100 days. The basis of the campaign is to engage the public and support their city’s bid to win a new electric driving infrastructure from Nissan. These chargers can r

Nokia has expanded its location services portfolio in India with the availability of ‘Traffic feature’, a real time traffic service on Nokia smartphones. The service, available to users in Delhi and Mumbai, will be able to deliver comprehensive, real-time traffic information to more than 26 million people in two of the country’s busiest cities. The traffic update is available to users on Symbian smartphones on Nokia Drive, and on Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710 on Nokia Maps. Upon download the user can

A consortium composed of Egis Projects and Sanef has signed a contract for the operation of the Port Mann Bridge open road tolling (ORT) project in the Metro Vancouver Area, Canada. The largest transportation infrastructure project in British Columbia history, it includes doubling the capacity of the bridge and widening the highway from Vancouver to Langley, a distance of 37 kilometres. Once complete, it will reduce travel times by up to 30 per cent, and save drivers up to an hour a day. The new bridge will

The United States Department of Transportation ITS Joint Program Office and the European Commission Information Society and Media Information, Communication, and Technology Unit, which have been working together on mutual ITS challenges and opportunities related to connected vehicles, will create a showcase to share their joint work at the ITS World Congress in Vienna, October 22-26, 2012.

Image Sensing Systems has announced that Mark S. Phillips has been appointed as the company's business development manager of CitySync automatic licence plate recognition (ALPR) products for North and South America, reporting to Dan Skites, company VP of sales and marketing. Phillips joins the company from Federal APD, parking – access control and revenue management systems, where he was a regional sales manager of the Southwestern District.