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Parking systems provider APT Skidata has completed a major new contract to provide Cambridge City Council in the UK with a wide range of parking, car park management and people access management technologies. The company will provide both the parking facility hardware, which includes its state-of-the-art barriers and payment stations, and all of the associated software that enables parking facilities to integrate directly with retailers’ promotions and maximise city events and other initiatives.

A US$229 million Costain construction site along 14 kilometres of highway has provided material for a model-practice case study issued by UK-based security solution provider VPS Site Security. The Heads of Valleys road follows the southern boundary of the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales and is undergoing a major improvements scheme. It presents a significant engineering and environmental challenge to secure safely, including heavy traffic, remote and difficult terrains with numerous access po

Xerox recently piloted its vehicle passenger detection system in Europe on the busy French-Swiss border, to demonstrate how an accurate automated system would enable transport authorities to operate high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and encourage commuters to adopt carpooling. The pilot, conducted in conjunction with the French Centre for Studies and Expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility, and Urban and Country planning (Cerema) and the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing (

PTV Group has been appointed as one of the framework contractors for three years to provide tactical and microsimulation operational modelling software to Transport for London (TfL). TfL uses PTV Visum operational software for the development of the Operational Network Evaluation (ONE) model, a tactical highway assignment model for London, said to be the largest of its type in the world. An earlier version of the ONE model, covering the central London road network, was successfully used for the operatio

The World Road Association (PIARC) used the World Congress to preview its online ITS and Road Network Operations knowledge-base. The PIARC website hosts a fully updated version of the PIARC ITS Handbook which, according to Tom Kern of ITS America, is “the world’s first authoritative and easily accessible source of information on a diverse range of ITS and RNO topics”.

Pride of place on satellite navigation pioneer TomTom’s stand is very high resolution 3D mapping, initially for Germany, which it says provides the 10cm accuracy necessary for highly automated vehicles. Its mainstream mapping is also high definition meaning the image can be used on any size of screen – as visitors can see.

Dutch company Technolution is demonstrating its latest progress in keeping autonomous vehicles safe. A demonstration area on its stand has several miniature vehicles scurrying around. They do not always avoid each other but, as Dr Edwin Mein explained, that is part of the process of working out rules to ensure autonomous vehicles can navigate safely.

Aisin Group is showcasing a new system which should make the roads safer in the event of drivers suffering sudden trauma such as a heart attack. It will detect if a driver falls unconscious and is able remotely to bring the car to a safe halt on the hard shoulder of a highway.

The government of Lithuania has used Esri’s software to create a website – which went live this week - covering all of its transport network rather than simply one urban area. “It’s a multimodal journey planner for the whole country,” explains Terry C. Bills, Global Transportation Industry Manager at Esri. “So it’s a question of stitching together city systems with inter-city ones and pulling them together in a seamless way.”

Incredibly, the Volar-e car displayed on the Applus Idiada stand will accelerate from 0-100km/h in under three seconds – not bad for an electric car. The Idiada engineering and technology division of the certification body Applus put all of the various technologies of this car together and fully tested it within nine months.

The first intended deployment of shared driverless vehicles (SDVs) in America has been announced at Bordeaux by EasyMile. Its EZ10 SDV vehicle is designed to transport up to 12 people the ‘last mile’ to and from transport hubs in areas where cars are either off limits or where parking is limited. EasyMile is a joint venture between vehicle manufacturer Ligier and robotics specialist Robosoft, and its EZ10 is to be tested under an exclusive agreement with Californian-based GoMentum Station.

Israel-based Autotalks says its partnership with STMicroelectronics is bearing fruit in the V2X market, with customers set to benefit from complementary technologies, and improved quality management and supply.

Vaisala is showing its latest weather station, which aims to give more accurate results to help provide safety information for road users. The heart of the new station is an onboard Linux computer. This enables it to take data from several sensors and interpolate between them, giving ‘best of breed’ information using the best elements of each sensor, said Daniel Johns, Vaisala’s global head of road and rail.