UTC

DG TREN's Fotis Karamitsos, on why the European Commission's new ITS Action Plan is looking to the past for future direction. The European Commission's (EC's) new Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe, which was announced as 2008 drew to a close, intends that transport and travel become 'cleaner; more efficient, including energy efficient; and safer and more secure'. At first sight, that wording might be interpreted as marking a significant policy shift within Europe, wit

UK-headquartered Siemens Mobility, Traffic Solutions has released its latest UTMC-compliant Outstation Transmission Unit (OTU) to provide customers with the full benefits available within SCOOT MC3 and fully implementing the latest UG405 communications protocol. According to Keith Manston, the company's Head of Product Management, the introduction of the new UTMC OTU and associated Siemens instation components has the potential to initiate a dramatic shift in the way UTC control is implemented on street.

For major road works schemes, necessary lane closures are timed to minimise congestion, most frequently at night and on weekends when traffic is at its lightest. As a result, rigid timetables are used in planning, programming and implementing work. In the UK, to calculate the expected traffic demand through roads works, historic profiles from the loop-based MIDAS (Motorway Incident Detection Automatic Signalling) system were used. These provided a valuable indicator of anticipated traffic behaviour but were

Beginning in the first quarter of 2010 it became evident that the IntelliDrivesm programme direction had been reestablished, by the USDOT's ITS Joint Program Office (JPO), after being adrift for a few years. The programme was now moving toward a deployment future and with a much broader stakeholder involvement than it had exhibited previously. By today not only is it evident that the programme was reestablished with a renewed emphasis on deployment, it is also apparent that it is moving along at a faster pa

The city of Temecula in California has approved McCain as the sole supplier for its citywide adaptive traffic signal synchronisation system.

Global Traffic Technologies (GTT) has announced the availability of the Opticom Infrared System Model 794 LED Emitter and Model RC790 Remote Coding Unit for emergency vehicle pre-emption and transit signal priority applications. The company claims the emitter delivers the advantages of LED technology, including more consistent performance over the life of the product and 90 per cent less power consumption. It is designed to be used with any of the installed base of Opticom Infrared Systems.

Continuing developments in telecommunications and public expectation have left the US's legacy, analogue 911 emergency call system trailing. Linda D. Dodge, Public Safety Program Manager for the ITS programme in USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration, the sponsor of the Next Generation 911 initiative, writes about efforts towards updating

AMG Systems' new 9000 series of ruggedised Ethernet switches have been specifically designed for outdoor and harsh industrial environments with extended temperature requirements, including roadside cabinet mounting for transport applications. The switches support ring topologies and are claimed to offer a cost-effective networking solution without comprising on advanced functionality such as fast ring recovery (less than 20ms) and power over Ethernet.

The QU Wireless Innovations Centre (QUWIC), and Mowasalat “Karwa”, a provider of public transportation solutions and services owned by the government of Qatar, have announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreement for Collaborating on Advanced Technologies for Intelligent Traffic Monitoring System (ITMS) and applications.

Neavia Technologies is launching WebVia Mobile, an innovative new tool that expands the capabilities of its traffic management software. It provides alarms and pictures in real time so that traffic managers not actually in the traffic management centre control room can check and qualify road traffic events when they happen in real time and react more quickly. Not only that, variable message signs can be activated directly from the smart phone. Thanks to alarm triggered phone calls, SMS, MMS or emails, WebVi