Features

A new frontier in the quest to monitor road traffic is opening up… but using airborne drones to reduce the jams comes with some thorny issues. Chris Tindall reports. Imagine if you could rely on a system that provided all the data you needed to regulate traffic flow, route vehicles and respond swiftly to emergencies for a fraction of the cost of piloting a helicopter. That system exists, but as engineers and traffic managers start to explore the potential of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – more commonly k

Drivewyze aims to revolutionise the way weighstation bypass systems work with its Pre-Clear system. And it’s not just looking at weighstations, either… Pete Goldin reports. Truck drivers know the drill: pull off the high­way at every weighstation and wait. Carriers know the drill, too: every minute spent waiting there translates directly into dollars lost. Traditionally, the only alternative to this scenario is a transponder-based system, which allows trucks to bypass the sites using technology similar to

Regulating heavy truck weight isn’t all about sensors in the road… this year marks a significant point in the progression of Australia’s Intelligent Access Programme as its administrators attempt to answer the scheme’s critics. Jon Masters reports. Australia’s Intelligent Access Programme (IAP), the country’s telematics-based system of reg­ulating movement of the heaviest vehicles, is now five years old. The IAP is administered by Transport Certification Australia (TCA) whose general manager for strategic d

David Crawford reviews an award-winning scheme that delivered a 30% increase in website usage – below budget The German Federal Agricul­tural Show (Bundesgarten­schau, BUGA) runs between mid-April and mid-October every other year in a differ­ent city. The most recent, 2011, edition took place in Koblenz, a medium-sized community with a population of just over 105,000 in the Rheinland-Pfalz region, and was expected to draw an additional 40,000 visitors a day to its central area. Traffic access from the moto

ITS America has raised con­cerns with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the potential use of the 5GHz band spec­trum by unlicensed national information infrastructure devices. It wants to protect the 5.9GHz band for dedicated short-range communications (DSRC)-based systems. These crucially underpin the development of connected vehicle (CV) technologies which could help slash the US’ annual tally of six million road traffic accidents and over 30,000 deaths. Within the US Department of Trans

Fiat Chrysler product concept and infotainment director Pierpaolo Tona told the conference that the big car manufacturers need to organise their telematics approach around three key pillars – and the first one of those is people. “OEMs need to understand consumers and their needs better than they understand them themselves,” he commented. The second pillar, suggested Tona, is technology. “Technology is never for the sake of it. Choose the right technology with the right performance to fulfil every consumer’

The New York City Department of Transportation instituted the Midtown in Motion project to promote multimodal mobility in the Midtown Core of Manhattan, a 110 square block area or “zone” from Second to Sixth Avenue and 42nd to 57th Street. Control extended from 86th Street to 23rd Street, focused on the core zone. MiM provides signal timing changes on two levels: Level 1 control starts from a pre-stored library of timing plans. These are designed offline and are relevant to arterials inside the Midtown stud

New York’s Traffic Management Centre faced its toughest test yet when Hurricane Sandy hit the United States at the end of October last year. Power was maintained to the building in Long Island City, Queens, throughout, although backup systems were operational and ready to supply critical transportation systems if power had been lost. Support from TransCore staff included making sure the TMC networks and transportation systems were operational, including the TransSuite Traffic Control System (TCS), which had

TransCore has been helping New York City’s Department of Transportation (NYDOT) with its ITS efforts since the early 1980s, via various consultancy services contracts. The company is currently working for the city under an IDIQ (indefinite quantity) contract and a separate ITS maintenance contract. According to TransCore vice president Bob Rausch, who has witnessed much of New York’s ITS development, the three main ‘building blocks’ of the city’s ITS infrastructure have developed simultaneously over recent

A comprehensive ITS strategy in New York built on a system of key building blocks has been crowned with an IRF award for the city’s Midtown in Motion adaptive control system. Jon Masters reviews New York’s ITS modernisation plan as the city looks to the next phase of expansion. In January this year the International Road Federation (IRF) presented TransCore and the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) with the IRF Global Road Achievement Award. This was for deployment of New York’s Midtown in

Promoting open market conditions for ITS deployment remains a major part of Mexico’s recent infrastructure modernization program. Travis P Dunn, partner at D’Artagnan Consulting, looks at the progress so far. In the past six years, Mexico has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure modernization program, calling for the construction and improvement of more than 19,000km of road infrastructure and the deployment of advanced technologies that improve safety, efficiency, and convenience for road users. One of

umors that self-driving taxis are about to hit the streets of Las Vegas have turned out to be untrue… but the age of the driverless vehicle is only just around the corner, as Pete Goldin finds out. From Herbie the Love Bug to Knight Rider to the cast of the Pixar film Cars, the autono­mous auto has long been a beloved icon in the entertainment industry. But how close is the fiction to fact? The general public might be surprised to find out just how soon autonomous vehicles could be driving on our roadways.