UTC

Atkins has joined forces with electric aircraft company Vertical Aerospace in the UK city of Bristol to develop intercity air taxi services. The partners are aiming to develop a blueprint for urban air mobility, with Atkins designing the system and infrastructure around the air vehicle. Atkins says the blueprint will cover aviation infrastructure, passenger experience, operating models, intelligent mobility and cyber security. Philip Hoare, president of Atkins, says the development of a system i

Authors Oliver Gassmann, Jonas Böhm and Maximilian Palmié have published a book to aid stakeholders in the development of smart cities. The authors say Smart Cities: Introducing Digital Innovations to Cities explores how the smart city concept promises to solve urban issues such as mobility, pollution and inclusion. The book is expected to serve as road map and provide answers to the following questions: • What core elements constitute smart cities? • How can the digital shadow of city element

InDriver has launched its ride-hailing service in Johannesburg, South Africa, which allows the driver and rider to negotiate lower fares. A report by IT News Africa says drivers can use the InDriver app to accept or ignore offers as well as negotiate for a higher price. Rifqa Carr, InDriver spokesperson says: “Drivers have the freedom to choose whichever ride request they like, without any risk of being penalised. They’re also able to see the full fare, from point A to point B, and can then decide

Ford’s GoBike is to launch an adaptive bike-share pilot programme for disabled people living in the city of Oakland, San Francisco Bay. The 26-week pilot stems from an agreement with the Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program (BORP), Lyft and the Oakland Department of Transportation (DoT). Caroline Samponaro, head of bike, pedestrian and scooter policy at Lyft, says: “Launching this programme will allow us to learn more about the specific needs of the disability community and work closely with them.” B

SAE International, a mobility standards developer, has formed a consortium to develop a framework of best practices to support secure mobility data sharing. It says the consortium will develop standardised data definitions and metrics as well as best practices to ensure appropriate safeguards for geolocation and personal data shared between mobility operators and cities. SAE Industry Technologies Consortia (SAE ITC), an affiliate organisation specialising in bringing together public agencies and industr

Ultimate Visual Solutions (UVS) has appointed Pawel Religa as a representative in Central and Eastern Europe to sell its Lucidity wall controller and control software. Religa will be based in Poland, but will cover Russia and other key parts of the European mainland UVS, a traffic control room company, says Lucidity is aimed at clients who require a solution where full command and control components are not needed. The Lucidity Wall Manager provides the launching of sources by dragging and dropping tem

Grab has joined forces with Sinar Mas Land to launch 50 electric scooters aimed at people travelling short distances in BSD (Bumi Serpong Damai) City in Indonesia. Sinar, a property developer, says the GrabWheels service is expected to be of interest to students and office workers travelling distances of 3-5km. Ongki Kurniawan, Grab Indonesia executive director, says the e-scooters can travel up to 15km per hour and can travel up to 40km when the battery is fully charged. Users can access the service

French transit operator RATP has joined forces with Airbus to explore the feasibility of urban air mobility in the Île-de-France region. RATP says the partners will commit to analysing the conditions for developing flying vehicles and work on urban integration to make a service available to as many people as possible. As part of the agreement, both companies intend to establish an ecosystem of partners to develop the transport offering. Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus, says: “We already have the t

Vaisala has launched a route optimisation service that it claims reduces the time involved to create treatment routes based on weather hazards, network priorities and available resources. The Vaisala Route Manager allows details of the road network and available resources such as depot locations and vehicle capacity to be imported to produce optimised routes with instructions which can upload to vehicles, the company adds. According to Vaisala, the solution allows planners to create unlimited sets of rou

Karhoo has joined forces with SNCF Mobilités to bring door-to-door transport services to travellers across France. Boris Pilichowski, co-CEO Karhoo, says: “Enabling door-to-door transport for SNCF customers takes us a step closer to a truly integrated network while improving the passenger experience ten-fold.” Karhoo has created a platform which it says enables travellers on SCNF’s high-speed trains to book first- and last-mile journeys by taxi or private hire vehicle. Called Mon Chauffeur, the service