News

The Vaisala road weather system deployed by Idaho Transportation Department has won a "Best New Innovative Product, Service or Application for 2013" award at the 2013 National Rural ITS Conference in St Cloud, Minnesota. The award highlights new technology that furthers the development and/or deployment of rural intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications, as well as specific and measurable outcomes that result from the product or service. The Idaho Transportation Department, using Vaisala's

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Bill Shuster witnessed firsthand a demonstration of driverless automobile technology, when he rode from suburban Pittsburgh to Pittsburgh International Airport in Carnegie Mellon University’s driverless vehicle. Shuster was joined yesterday by Pennsylvania Department of Transportation secretary Barry Schoch for the thirty-mile trip in the driverless 2011 Cadillac SRX. The fully automated vehicle safely navigated the route, which included various dri

The University of Tokyo and Mazda Motor Corporation have jointly developed a system involving wireless communications technology to prevent collisions between cars and streetcars (or trams). The system’s car-mounted sensors can detect signals from a streetcar up to 100 metres away, in contrast with the current range of just a few dozen metres for conventional sensors on cars. The new system is designed to prevent collisions between vehicles and oncoming streetcars by allowing their position and direction

New figures from the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) have revealed that motorists with up to 42 penalty points on their licence are still driving on Britain’s roads. Drivers can be banned from the road if they accumulate 12 points on their licence over a three-year period, but there are 8,000 drivers still getting behind the wheel despite having reached or exceeded that number.

Transport Minister Norman Baker has launched the UK government’s strategy, Driving the future today - a strategy for ultra low emission vehicles in the UK, to drive forward the ultra low emission vehicles (ULEVs) industry. The new strategy signals a major change in the way vehicles will be powered in the future and reaffirms the government’s commitment to provide new opportunities for the motor industry to help grow the UK economy.

After years of delays and cost overruns, the newly built US$6.4 billion eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened with few problems other than the traffic snarls that were common around the toll plaza of the old span. The single pylon suspension span replaces a structure that was damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It is designed to withstand the strongest earthquake estimated by seismologists to occur at the site over a 1,500-year period.

Thales has been awarded a contract by Hong Kong’s metro operator, MTR Corporation, to provide signalling technology for Shatin to Central Link Phase 1 segment of the Hong Kong metro using a communications-based train control (CBTC) system. To provide fully automatic train operation the contract includes the modernisation of the Ma On Shan Line and West Rail Line lines, where Thales previously installed its CBTC solution in 2003/04.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Siemens is to exit its electric vehicle (EV) charging points business, as demand and market development turned out weaker than expected. Despite a government plan to see one million registered electric cars on German roads by 2020, consumers haven't been keen about such vehicles. Last year for instance, only 4,157 e-cars were newly registered in Germany, bringing the total to 7,112.

One of the ten key projects launched in 2006 by Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport aims to build the world’s most intelligent highways. In a world where eighty per cent of traffic accidents on expressways are attributed to driver negligence, Korea records the lowest level of traffic safety among OECD member countries. The smart highway project aims to reduce the accident rate and encourage people to use expressways more conveniently by integrating information, automobile and road mana

Nokia Corporation has signed an agreement to sell substantially all of its devices and services business and licence its patents to Microsoft for US$7.1 billion in cash, payable at closing. Following the transaction, Nokia plans to focus on its three established businesses: NSN network infrastructure and services; Here mapping and location services; and Advanced Technologies technology development and licensing.