News

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the US claim to have found a solution to delays caused by traffic signals. They estimate that replacing physical traffic signals with virtual traffic signals could reduce urban commute times by 40 per cent. Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Ozan Tonguz’s research on virtual traffic lights uses connected vehicle technology, enabling vehicles to manage traffic control without infrastructure based traffic lights. Using the technology, virtua

The ITS World congress takes place in Bordeaux in October 2015. Authors who wish to submit technical, scientific and commercial papers and proposals for special interest session have just three days left. The deadline is Monday 19 January at 23.59 CET and no extensions will be granted. Submit your papers and proposals here now.

His daily quest to find a parking space gave Amir Ehsani Zonouz, a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA, the incentive to look for an effective solution, leading to him winning the inaugural Siemens Mobility IDEA (Improving Design and Engineering for All) Contest. Zonouz proposed using quadcopters, or drones, which can quickly find unoccupied parking spaces, identify the shortest path to the closest free spot and immediately guide the driver to the space using a mobile app or direct

Brazil's plan to tender a joint airport concession proposed by Rio Grande do Sul state involving the Salgado Filho airport in Porto Alegre and a new airport in Portão-Nova Santa Rita is one step closer to reality. Civil aviation department SAC has delivered a document to newly sworn-in governor José Ivo Sartori, which included an evaluation by the country's air space control department Decea; according to SAC head Eliseu Padilha, going through with the concession is the best option. The final decision li

The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) is to host a free webinar to inform stakeholders of its new Connected Cities Research Program. The webinar, ‘Creating Smart Paths for Connected Cities’, is scheduled for 26 February 2015, from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm EST. The webinar follows the release of the ITS JPO white paper, The Smart/Connected City and its Implications for Connected Transportation, which will provide a foundation for the discussion.

The UK’s Transport Systems Catapult announced its first international partnership after signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Brazilian technology provider Gol Grupo. The two organisations will now explore areas of cooperation in technologies and services related to urban mobility and connected smart cities. “The Transport Systems Catapult was set up not only to champion the development of smarter transport systems for the UK, but also to promote UK expertise in Intelligent Mobility for overseas

Google has begun discussions with most of the world's top automakers and has assembled a team of traditional and non-traditional suppliers to speed up efforts to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020, a top Google executive has said. Those manufacturers are said to include General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota, Daimler and Volkswagen. "We'd be remiss not to talk to ... the biggest auto manufacturers. They've got a lot to offer," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, said in an

A global partnership between MasterCard and mobile ticketing provider Masabi is set to combine MasterCard’s payment technology with Masabi’s JustRide mobile ticketing platform, providing consumers with a faster and more convenient way to get around a city’s transit system. Masabi will integrate MasterPass, MasterCard’s secure digital payment service, into JustRide, enabling consumers to pay for their ticket with a simple touch. The first city to benefit from this alliance will be Athens, where passe

The US I-95 Corridor Coalition has chosen TomTom’s real time traffic information service to help reduce congestion on 40,000 miles of highways, major roads and secondary roads in 16 states and Washington DC. The Coalition believes that TomTom’s expertise in identifying where roads are congested and pinpointing both the beginning and end of a traffic jam will help coalition members to better manage traffic and ease congestion along one of the most travelled road networks in the US. “We’re excited that

A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that smart city traffic management and parking projects will reduce cumulative global emissions in the order of 164 million metric tonnes of CO2 between 2014 and 2019 - equivalent to the annual emissions produced by 35 million vehicles. Not only will this benefit the environment, but it will also significantly impact the quality of city dwellers' lives, with some 700 million automobiles projected to be on city roads by 2019. The report, Smart Cities: Strategie

The city of Joinville in Brazil's Santa Catarina state will call around US$41.7 million in urban roadworks tenders in the first quarter of 2015. With financing from federal savings bank Caixa agreed, procurement for the 36-month project can begin. "According to our schedule, a tender should be launched by March," a spokesperson said. Works, which fall under phase 2 of the federal government's growth acceleration plan, PAC, include building 55 kilometres of exclusive bus lanes, 91 bus stops and one cen

The Obama administration has begun to map out a 30-year framework to meet US infrastructure needs, according to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, speaking in an interview with the Washington Post. Foxx promised a comprehensive review of the demand for new or replacement systems a year ago in an address to the Transportation Research Board. He returned to the group this week to roll out conclusions expected in a report later this year. “Transportation is a system of systems,” Foxx said, rather tha

The main findings and recommendations of the INTERREG IVC co-funded POSSE project are summarised in several reports, the POSSE Good Practice Guide to developing and implementing OSS and the POSSE Exploitation Plan, both of which were published towards the end of 2014. The three years of discussion and knowledge-sharing on Open Specifications and Standards (OSS) for urban ITS in Europe have been very beneficial to all partners; a key finding of the project is that the diversity of Europe, notably its in

The Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been conducting evaluations of LED replacement lamps, most recently those with a mogul base. Its report on phase 1 of the project, Mogul based LED replacement lamps, provides details of the market characterisation and pilot photometric testing of 18 representative mogul base LED lamps alone and in luminaires. LRC found that only four of the 18 lamps met the minimum DesignLights Consortium Qualified Products List criteria for retro

New York has become the 32nd state to offer Drivewyze bypasses, with nine sites currently live and many more expected to go live within the next few weeks. Drivewyze PreClear is a free weigh station app, compatible with Android or iOS device and select in-cab ELDs, that alerts drivers to upcoming weigh stations, even when it is running in the background, enabling drivers to be prepared to safely pull in. Compatible Drivewyze users are now eligible to receive bypasses at 439 sites in 32 states across