News

The European Commission's (EC's) second Marco Polo funding programme for projects which shift freight transport from the road to sea, rail and inland waterways, has launched a call for proposals to reduce road congestion and also the impact of freight transportation upon the environment. The call for proposals is worth US$82 million. Companies who are able to transfer their freight from the roads, and use alternative transportation methods such as by sea, rail and inland waterways will receive grants under

PIPS Technology has supplied and installed two Journey Time Measurement Systems (JTMS) in Gravesend and Tunbridge Wells for Kent Highway Services (KHS) in the UK. There are 21 different camera sites featuring a total of 34 PIPS P372 integrated Spike Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras spread across the two individual project locations, all of which are on single-lane carriageways. The cameras, linked via wireless communications to the JTMS software, read the number plate of every vehicle that

Meier Express, with headquarters in Bern, Switzerland, has opted for SmarTour from PTV for managing its fleet of vehicles. The transport company, which offers logistical transport services all over Europe, uses this high-end planning software to visualise complex transport processes, enable cooperative planning within the team of schedulers and joint scheduling of different types of transport in one single system.

A free public meeting and webinar to provide an update on the Connected Vehicle Safety and Policy Programme is being organised by the US DoT’s ITS Joint Program Office (ITS JPO). It will provide an overview of the entire research programme, including vehicle to vehicle (V2V), vehicle to infrastructure (V2I), safety pilot, safety policy, and human factors. There will also be a session on commercial vehicles designed to solicit input on US DoT's research plans for related commercial vehicle applications for s

Parking technology specialist APT SkiData has won a significant new contract with Edinburgh Airport to replace the existing car parking technology infrastructure to manage and control the parking of more than 4,500 vehicles. The new system will make maximum use of the latest automatic number plate recognition and RFID technologies for speed and ease of access for visitors without sacrificing control.

A Technology Partnerships study has been announced to evaluate the safety benefits of a solar-powered traffic signage system designed to minimise crashes on horizontal curves in the US. Part of the US FHWA Highways for Life initiative, evaluations will test the effectiveness of innovative road infrastructure safety technologies that are fully developed and market ready, but have had little use on US roads. Although horizontal curves make up a small percentage of total road miles, they account for 25 per cen

Volvo Car Corporation and Siemens have announced that they intend to jointly advance the technical development of electric cars through extensive strategic cooperation. The focus is on the joint development of electrical drive technology, power electronics and charging technology as well as the integration of those systems into Volvo C30 electric vehicles.

Volkswagen’s latest efficiency technology, a cylinder shut-off system, will launch in the new 1.4-litre TSI engine from the start of 2012. The company claims it is the first manufacturer in the world to implement cylinder shut-off on a four-cylinder TSI engine in high-volume production. Fuel consumption is significantly reduced by temporarily shutting off two of the four cylinders under low to medium loads. Cylinder shut-off is active whenever the engine speed of the 1.4-litre TSI is between 1,400 and 4,000

Finland-headquartered RFID technology specialist Confidex has opened an office in São Paulo, Brazil, to be closer to the Latin American market where the company has already built up an extensive partner network and is engaged with key players in the industry to provide solutions for large deployments across the continent. Confidex centralises its R&D activities in Finland and already has offices across Western Europe, the US, India and China.

General Motors and LG Group will jointly design and engineer future Electric Vehicles (EVs), expanding a relationship built on LG’s work as the battery cell supplier for the Chevrolet Volt and Opel Ampera extended-range EVs. Teams of LG and GM engineers will work on key components, as well as vehicle structures and architectures. Vehicles resulting from the partnership will be sold in many countries. Timing of the launch of the first vehicles resulting from the partnership will be announced closer to market

Hong Kong MTR has awarded Thales a contract to supply an Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) and security access management system for West Island Line (WIL), South Island Line (SIL(E)) and Kwun Tong Line Extension (KTE), which are all new extensions, currently under construction, of the existing MTR rail network. The WIL, consisting of three stations, will add another 3km to the Island Line; SIL(E), with five stations, is a new 7km section; while KTE is a 2.6 km extension of the current Kwun Tong Line with two

International consulting group Sweco has acquired the ITS consulting firm Inmind, which has offices in in Gothenburg and Stockholm, Sweden. “Inmind’s core expertise in ITS will strengthen our offering to clients in this area and together we will be market-leading in ITS at both the regional and national level,” says Johan Dozzi, President of Sweco Infrastructure in Sweden.

The city council for Madrid in Spain is to spend US$34.6 million by the end of 2013 on retrofitting 600 traffic lights in the city to new LED lights, which will bring about energy savings of 80 per cent. A contract to replace half the current incandescent bulbs has been approved by the city council and it also includes maintenance work to ensure efficient operation of the traffic light network