UTC

Ford has given no explanation for the decision to abandon its ride-sharing shuttle service Chariot, but said it came after “significant consideration”. The service will stop operating on UK shuttle commuter routes tomorrow – after just a few months - and on US routes after 1 February. All Chariot services will cease completely by the end of March. A statement from the company gave little clue as to why: “In today’s mobility landscape, the wants and needs of customers and cities are changing rapidly. We a

More than two-thirds of people do not know what a smart city is - and around a quarter find the concept worrying due to lack of available information, says a new study. ATG Access surveyed 1,000 UK participants and found that just 24% of people in this category believe the concept would improve overall safety. Smart Cities: Turning the dream into a reality says educating the public on how smart cities can help solve challenges on traffic congestion will be key to solving consumer reservations. Of

International Road Dynamics (IRD) is to use weigh-in-motion (WIM) technology to help maintain commercial vehicle enforcement solutions in the commonwealth of Virginia, US, over a two-year period. The scope of the $4.2 million maintenance and support contract also includes the deployment of IRD’s road side and in-station electronics and computer systems. The company will also use automated vehicle identification equipment, variable message signs, vehicle tracking systems, overview cameras, vehicle dimensio

GMV is to upgrade the onboard video surveillance system for Spanish operator Seville Metro’s 21-train fleet. GMV says it will help improve safety for passengers and those outside the train, by recording and sending the video signal of all the train’s cameras to a control centre in Seville, the capital of Spain’s Andalusia region. The company will also replace the control centre’s back office software to allow operators to display real-time images of the different cameras, as well as track down and run rec

Ojo Electric has launched an electric scooter which comes with a seat to serve as part of a ride-share service in Austin, Texas. The deployment stems from an agreement with Austin Commuter Scooter (ACS), a subsidiary of Bike Share of Austin. Elliott McFadden, executive director of Bike Share of Austin, says the service will link to public transportation needs while reducing carbon emissions and congestion. Ojo and ACS will share data on usage and ride trends through the scooter’s on-board telemetr

Key players in the transport sector will debate the challenges faced by local authorities worldwide from new digitised platforms such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in a dedicated session at ITS International’s 2019 MaaS Market Conference in London this March. Taxi-hailing apps have already demonstrated the disruptive nature of new digitised transport services. As a result, some local authorities have struggled to retain control over issues such as traffic management and the vetting of taxi drivers and

Aimsun has partnered with UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies to develop Flow, a tool for managing large-scale traffic systems where human-driven and autonomous vehicles (AVs) operate together. Flow offers a suite of pre-built traffic scenarios and is now integrated with Aimsun Next mobility modelling software. The open source architecture knits together microsimulation tools with deep reinforcement learning libraries in the cloud. Launched last September, Flow allows users to build and

Edeva is to deploy two active speed bumps at Curtain University in Perth, Western Australia, following an initial deployment in which speeding was reduced from 70% to 25%. Edeva’s Actibump detects the speed of oncoming vehicles and lowers its hatch by 60mm in the road surface if a driver is speeding – which sends a physical bump to the driver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxpvwKiOpag Both Actibumps will be installed on Townsing Drive while a third is to replace a ‘dumb bump’, a moulded black plas

A mobility operating system cannot be privately built, it must be open and governed by cities, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT). Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las Vegas, LADoT general manager Seleta Reynolds described how the authority had published specifications to manage scooters following what she described as an “explosion of private companies”. She explained that the first bucket of application programming interfaces (API) provides consistent