News

After months of design, production and field trials, the RobuTAINeR intelligent autonomous vehicle (IAV), developed by Intelligent Transportation for Dynamic Environment (InTrade) was successfully demonstrated during two public showings at the port of Rouen in France and Dublin Ferry port in Ireland. RobuTAINeR is designed for container transport in small and medium-sized ports; the demonstrations enabled InTrade partners to show the operational effectiveness, capabilities and reliability of the RobuTAIN

The Mersey Gateway Project in Liverpool, UK, has been endorsed by the UK’s most senior civil engineer, Nick Baveystock, director general of the Institution of Civil Engineers, on a trip to the area see the location of the new bridge and learn more about plans for the project. The centrepiece of the Mersey Gateway Project is a new six-lane toll bridge over the River Mersey. The existing Silver Jubilee Bridge will also be tolled as part of the project, which is expected to help create thousands of new jobs

The UK Highways Agency is trialling a system to add commercially available traffic data to its existing sources to monitor traffic flow on England’s motorways and strategic roads. Similar data sources are already used by satellite navigation devices, smartphones, and applications like Google maps. The system uses data that comes mostly from vehicle tracking devices installed by fleet operators, and a proportion from mobile sat-nav type devices, including smartphone traffic applications where the user has

Ferry commuters in Australia’s largest city can now use the new Opal smart card across the entire Sydney Ferries network, as the rollout of the city’s new ticketing system continues. The successful rollout marks completion of an important milestone for Cubic Transportation Systems, which is installing the new electronic ticketing system with other members of the Pearl Consortium, a range of contractors, and experts from Transport for NSW. The New South Wales (NSW) Minister for Transport Gladys Berejik

Ertico’s annual iMobility Awards are a unique opportunity to pay tribute to the most outstanding, ambitious and innovative iMobility deployments paving the way for future of mobility. Paul Timmers, director Sustainable and Secure Society DG Connect at the European Commission presented the 2013 at a ceremony in the Netherlands. In the three categories, the honours went to: In the Industry/Technology category, Gemalto was rewarded for its outstanding work in the deployment of eCall in Europe helping glob

Plans for an underground bus loop in Brisbane’s central business district (CBD) have been released at an estimated cost of US$2 billion, as the pre-feasibility report for the project has been completed. The bus loop, part of Brisbane council’s pre-feasibility study into the Suburbs 2 City Buslink project, is intended to reduce traffic congestion and bus travel times by connecting existing bus stations with new stations underground.

Derbyshire County Council is to upgrade speed cameras across the county to accommodate digital technology, at a cost of US$1.6 million. The council’s seventy speed cameras currently use wet film technology. It is believed that only twelve of these actually have film in them and that they are changed on a rolling basis. The new digital network will see all seventy sites being brought into operation at once.

Bay Area Infrastructure Financing Authority (BAIFA) has announced the competitive procurement of a toll system integrator (TSI) to design and provide toll systems for nearly 90 directional miles of toll express lanes and expects to be tolling a total of 270 miles within a few years. The plan is to develop toll express lanes following agreement on a regional network in which all the area's HOV lanes will be tolled for single and two occupant vehicles. The RFP covers three initial projects: 55 kilometres o

Q-Free is to implement its enhanced imaging processing (EIP) solution for the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX), USA in a contract worth around US$6.9 million. EIP utilises automatic licence plate reader (ALPR) and vehicle signature recognition (VSR) software and enables toll authorities to achieve high automation and low error rates using artificial intelligence and self learning capabilities. The system interfaces with existing toll road back office systems, minimising operational cost, errors, an

UK company Quality Marking Systems has released its comments on a recent road safety article in the Road Safety Markings Association’s (RSMA’s) Top Marks magazine entitled ‘ERF at the forefront of improving road safety in Europe’. The article examines the growing importance of a well maintained road infrastructure and indicates that the European Union Road Federation (ERF) has initiated a very promising cooperation with the European Road Assessment Programme and the European Association of Vehicle Manuf

Recent research by SBD shows that road-related fatalities are the eighth leading cause of death globally with more than a million people dying each year. Middle income countries, which include most ASEAN economies, account for 72 per cent of the world’s population and contribute to about 80 per cent of road traffic fatalities.

Vendors, service providers and US states who want to seek and share information about the new road usage charge legislation recently passed by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) should attend a day-long meeting on 13 November at the World Trade Centre in Portland, Oregon. ODOT wants to share details as well as gather information that can help it craft the nation’s first road usage charge program. The ODOT team will be available to meet with specific vendors in scheduled one-on-one sessions.

Plans for projects to update the road and rail networks in Lancashire have been announced by Transport for Lancashire, a new body comprising Lancashire County Council, Blackburn with Darwen Council and Blackpool Borough Council. The projects will develop, approve and fund major transport infrastructure work with a US$152 million budget from the (DfT) Department for Transport the City Deal for the Preston area, and developer contributions.