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On 20 May, the Automobile Club Albania (ACA) received the European Road Safety Charter’s Excellence in Road Safety Award for best practices. For the 2016 awards, the Charter had chosen to award actions on youth and innovation. Selected from nearly 100 entries, the ACA education campaign targeted children from 5 to 12 years old and included the broadcasting of a series of cartoons on national TV channels, in schools and in kindergartens. In future, the programme is to be gradually introduced in primary s

The shortlist for the Public Transport Innovation Awards, which will be made at the European mobility exhibition Transports Publics 2016, includes manufacturers of electric buses, ticketing companies and apps creators. Transports Publics, which takes place in Paris from 14-16 June, is a biennial exhibition for key players in public transport and sustainable mobility from across Europe. Over 10,000 participants are expected to visit the exhibition to discuss the latest innovations for urban, interurban an

A group seeking to improve American oil security through domestic production, fuel competition, driverless technology and anti-cartel measures has called on policymakers to remove regulatory hurdles in order to accelerate the deployment of self-driving cars, as well as revise tax incentives to boost sales of less expensive electric vehicles. Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), chaired by FedEx Corporation chairman, president and CEO Frederick W. Smith and retired US Marine Corps Commandant James Con

Having had an extensive waiting list some six months before the doors open, the organisers of Intertraffic Mexico (16-18 November) have moved the exhibition to a bigger location (Hall C) in Mexico City’s Centro Banamex exhibition complex. The bigger hall offers 50% more stand space, has 7,000m2 of floor area and already 110 exhibitors from 23 countries have signed up to Mexico’s inaugural ITS exhibition. With 21 cities having populations of more than 500,000 people, heavy traffic congestion and poor air

UK Road safety charity Brake is concerned by worrying new figures showing car traffic reached a new peak in 2015, with overall traffic increasing by almost 19 per cent since 1995. According to UK government statistics, the number of vehicle miles travelled grew by 1.1 per cent in 2015, to 247.7 billion, slightly higher than the previous peak in 2007. Van traffic has continued to grow more quickly than any other vehicle type, rising 4.2 per cent from 2014 levels. Lorry traffic saw the largest year-on-year

Connected car services provider Inrix is to partner with mobile payments solutions supplier Parkmobile to jointly develop an embedded, end-to-end parking solution for automakers, which will enable US drivers to find, route to, reserve and pay for parking at lots, garages and meters directly from the dashboard. Inrix will now offer automakers embedded, end-to-end user experience across both on- and off-street parking, while Parkmobile will enhance Inrix's real-time occupancy data to help drivers make more

Electric vehicle charging company POD Point has become an approved supplier of home electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions for Nissan GB, the manufacturer of the Leaf electric car, which has sold over 12,000 in the UK. POD Point’s new status as an approved home charging unit supplier means that anyone purchasing a Nissan plug-in vehicle will be able to easily access a charge point for their home. The POD Point Solo is a reliable home charge unit which can be installed within ten working days. POD Po

The city of Moscow has been awarded the International Transport Forum (ITF) 2016 Transport Achievement Award for its exemplary approach to improving traffic conditions in the Russian capital. Following twenty years of almost uncontrolled development of urban traffic, Moscow introduced a rigorous and comprehensive set of policies to address the gridlock on its streets. These included paid car parking, development of public transport, ticketing, car sharing and taxi reform, development of cycling and envi

UK LED lighting specialist Gardasoft Vision has been acquired by Optex of Japan and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary. Founded in 1999, Gardasoft specialises in the design and manufacture of high performance pulse/strobe controllers for LED lighting and high intensity LED illuminators, providing solutions to the global machine vision and intelligent traffic automatic number plate recognition markets. Being part of Optex will allow Gardasoft to extend the applications of its new Triniti technology

Cubic Transportation Systems’ (CTS) Ventra, the account-based open payment system launched in 2013 for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and suburban bus operator Pace, has processed more than one billion account-based journeys. CTA, with daily ridership of 1.6 million journeys, is the first major transit system in North America to implement account-based open payment and is Cubic’s first large-scale deployment of its NextAccount technology. Ventra supports both account-based processing through an a

According to Nathan Marsh, Smart Transport director at EY, a new Bus Services Bill included today’s Queen’s Speech could herald just the beginning of a journey to smarter travel and paves the way for cities and regions to reap the benefits of a London-style network. The speech also included a range of measures to modernise the UK’s economy, such as a Modern Transport Bill which included legislation to enable the development of commercial spaceports and new laws to make the UK ready to pioneer driverless

Following successful field testing, the first phase of the Masabi MTA eTix apps developed for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is expected to launch on select lines of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North (MNR) in June. The app, which allows customers to purchase train tickets via a mobile device, will first debut on the LIRR’s Port Washington Branch and Metro-North’s Hudson Line and will be available to all Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North customers by the end of

The latest Smart Insights report, Smart ticketing on the Path to Dematerialization, explores the dynamics and the specificities of the smart ticketing business. It anticipates that in spite of the growth of software and service based solutions, public transport operators will issue over one billion smart cards by 2021. According to this research, mobile ticketing is expected to experience a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 51 per cent over the 2016-2021 period while the share of contactless and ma