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Vaisala's collaboration with the Idaho Transportation Department has been recognised by the US Road Safety Foundation and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as winners of the biennial National Roadway Safety Awards. The award winners were chosen for reducing fatalities and injuries on roadways through excellence and innovation in operations, planning, and design. The Idaho Transportation Department, using Vaisala's pavement sensors that calculate grip or friction values, found that this value can als

The transport and communications ministry (SCT) in Mexican consortium is to go ahead with the 62 kilometre Siglo XXI highway concession in Morelos state. The US$211 million contract to build, operate and maintain the concession has been awarded to a consortium of Pinfra, Grupo Bursátil Mexicano and Aldesa Mexico. The SCT confirmed that tenders for the 80 kilometre Atizapán-Atlacomulco and the 70 kilometre Guanajuato-San Miguel de Allende highway are under way.

During a recent debate on connected vehicles, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) highlighted that intelligent transport systems (ITS) are widely used within the road transport sector to improve efficiency, especially for fleet management, but also in fuel reduction and locating safe and secure parking. While new developments are also seeing communication between vehicles and road infrastructure, resulting in quicker, safer and more fuel efficient journeys, the IRU stressed the need for common s

The latest report from MarketsandMarkets forecasts the global transportation safety and transportation security market to grow from US$37.80 billion in 2013 to US$62.96 billion in 2018, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.7 per cent from 2013 to 2018. North America (NA) is expected to be the biggest contributor in terms of revenue contribution, while the growing markets Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America (LA), are expected to experience increased market traction

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) is expected to call a tender for the installation of the next generation of electronic road pricing (ERP) system as early as the first half of 2014. Although there is potential for it to go island-wide, initially the ERPII system will utilise the current network of some 70 gantries, charging drivers each time they pass a gantry. If all goes well, a satellite-based system, which charges motorists for the distance they travel in the priced zones, will be up and r

TomTom has announced a partnership with UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. TomTom’s global Traffic Index data will be used by UN-Habitat and its stakeholders around the world to make strategic decisions when tackling urban congestion. Recently TomTom released the sixth edition of its Traffic Index which revealed a clear pattern of increased congestion. Commuters around the world are spending on average eight working days stuck in traffic. This shows that traditional responses li

From young professionals to lifetime achievers, the ITS Australia awards ceremony recognised leading industry contributors at the end of a busy 2013 event calendar. Winners were announced before more than 110 industry leaders in Melbourne last week and the Awards program was well supported with nominations from a wide cross section of industry sectors. Winners included Keith Aldridge who was posthumously awarded the Max Lay lifetime achievement award for his creative vision, passion and dedication to

A fleet of 130 virtual electric cars is set to appear on the roads of Munich, Germany, where the Technische Universität München (TUM) is to provide participating companies with smartphones that will be installed in taxis and commercial vehicles to track their movements. The phones will record the exact location of the vehicle via GPS, along with driving behaviour such as acceleration, deceleration and turns. The phone’s software will then calculate the energy consumption for a freely configured electric

Working closely with partners from Puget Sound-area transit and planning organizations to implement a multimodal-system analysis, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has produced its new Corridor Capacity Report to explain how transportation system efficiency would improve if travellers made better use of available capacity across all modes of transportation. In addition to updates on vehicle miles travelled, state-wide delay and the cost of this delay to Washingtonians, the report

A partnership between premium car manufacturer Audi and the international traffic technology group Swarco recently demonstrated their achievements in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication as part of the European Compass4D project. The demonstration in the Italian city of Verona involved connecting the city's traffic management system, which is based on Swarco's Omnia platform, with Audi's onboard navigation system. By comparing its current position, speed and driving direction, the vehicle re

International Road Dynamics (IRD) announced today that it has received a US$1.6 million contract to provide a weigh-in-Motion (WIM) sorter system for a new commercial vehicle enforcement facility (CVEF) near Mountain Pass, California. This system will be used by enforcement personnel to select and direct commercial vehicles into the CVEF. IRD will supply an integrated system including its industry-leading single load cell (SLC) WIM scales and advanced iSINC controller electronics. A total of sixteen SLC

ITS Italy will host the final event of the European COMPASS (Optimised CO-Modal PASSenger Transport for reducing carbon emissions) project. The 25-month project examined how social, economical, environmental and technological changes will affect transport and derived the key challenges for future policy and planning. Its results will be delivered at the final conference on 13 November in Rome and will include recommendations on improving data collection in passenger transport. The draft programme c

Canada has been selected to host the 2017 ITS World Congress. Three Canadian and nine American cities vied to host the conference and after lengthy deliberation the International Committee settled on Montreal. The last World Congress in Canada was in Toronto in 1999 which attracted over 5,000 delegates. ITS Canada says the Montreal Congress will be even bigger and is promising it will be a year the world of transportation will remember!