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Ertico–ITS Europe and Glonass Union have signed an accord between the HeERO eCall project and Glonass Union, covering the pan-European 112 eCall system based on 112 and the Era-Glonass eCall system being deployed in Russia. The HeERO project manages the pre-deployment of the 112 pan-European eCall based emergency service in fifteen European states. Glonass Union is the Russian navigation services provider responsible for implementation of the accident and emergency response system Era-Glonass in Russia,

Spanish technology multinational Indra has been awarded four new contracts worth US$17 million for its traffic control and toll technology in Mexico. The technology will be implemented on the Paquete Michoacán motorways, the Poetas fast lane, the Celaya ring road motorway and the Necaxa Tihuatlan tunnels. Intelligent traffic systems (ITS) and toll systems will be deployed on the Celaya ring road motorway, including a control centre to integrate the various ITS and surveillance sub-systems via closed circ

PTV Group, in association with MTECH, Thailand, is holding an urban traffic planning and management workshop in Bangkok on Tuesday 14th January. During the workshop participants will have the opportunity to learn more about the capabilities of Visum, Vissim, Viswalk and Vistro, and find out about the software applications and why they are suitable for traffic and transport investigation in Thailand. Case studies demonstrating the use and application of PTV software in Thailand as well across the regio

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has announced a Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan for US$452 million to finance the Downtown Crossing section of the Louisville and Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project. The cost of the Downtown Crossing, which Kentucky is funding, is around US$1.3 billion, and represents one half of the bi-state Ohio River Bridges project, which also includes the new East End Bridge, also spanning the Ohio River eight miles to the north

US state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are gearing up to meet the challenge of maintaining a high level of service during the winter without the benefit of additional financial resources. High-tech solutions like GPS guidance systems and low-tech products like potato juice are helping states to cut costs, improve efficiency, and minimise environmental impacts. The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities uses a variety of advanced technologies to combat extreme winter weather and

The European Commission has adopted Shift2Rail, a new public-private partnership to invest around US$1.3 billion in research and innovation to get more passengers and freight onto Europe's railways. Rail is amongst the most efficient and climate-friendly forms of transport, but currently it only carries about only 10 per cent of European cargo and 6 per cent of passengers each year. Shift2Rail is an ambitious public-private partnership which will manage a seven-year work programme of targeted research an

Austrian-based traffic technology group Swarco has appointed Cees de Wijs as its new Chief Executive Officer. De Wijs, who has almost 20 years of experience in traffic and transport telematics across all transport modes, will take up his new position on 1 January. De Wijs, aged 45, is a Dutch national and holds a PhD degree in engineering from Delft University of Technology. He previously worked for Royal KPN Group and Logica where he was transport and logistics group director, responsible for the comp

New low-level traffic lights designed for cyclists have been authorised for use following safety trials, the first time the lights have been used in the UK, transport minister Stephen Hammond has announced. More than 80 per cent of cyclists favoured the use of low-level signals during the track-based trials of the system, which works by repeating the signal displayed on main traffic lights at the eye level of cyclists.

The European Commission (EU) funded Cooperative Mobility Systems and Services for Energy Efficiency (eCoMove) project claims that traffic accounts for 23 per cent of CO2 emissions around the world. eCoMove aims to optimise driving behaviour and transport flow by ecologically optimised traffic management. The goal is to reduce the CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. The results were presented at the final event at the end of November.

The European Commission has granted funding of US$1.9 million of the total budget of US$2.5 million for the FOT-Net Data project, which aims to make traffic data collected in field operational tests (FOTs) more widely available to researchers. The three-year project will start in January 2014. The EU has supported a number of projects since 2008, enabling testing of the latest vehicle information technology in large-scale field trials. Drivers have been able to test the most promising prototypes or produ