News

East Midlands Trains in the UK, part of the transport operator Stagecoach Group which operates trains and buses throughout the UK, is expanding its smartcard scheme that will allows rail users to purchase and store rail season tickets on a re-usable electronic smart card instead of using traditional paper tickets. The programme is operating under the UK government’s ITSO smartcard scheme for interoperable transport.

Construction group Stabag has been awarded a US$119 million contract for the two construction lots U1/9 – Altes Landgut and U1/10 – Troststraße, forming part of the extension of underground line U1 into the south of Vienna, Austria. The client, Wiener Linien, is extending underground line U1 from Reumannplatz station to Oberlaa to provide a direct link between the densely populated areas of the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung housing estate and the city centre from 2016. This will link up the residential distric

Pöyry`s Urban Business Group has been awarded a contract to provide services for the design, tender documentation and site supervision phases for Line 2 of the Ho Chi Minh City Metro, Vietnam. The assignment will be carried out with Helsinki-headquartered Pöyry as the technical leader of a consortium that includes ILF Beratende Ingenieure, Germany, Obermeyer Planen + Beraten, Germany and Tedi South, Vietnam. Pöyry's share of the contract is approximately US$16.7 million.

Johnson Controls has developed an innovative instrument cluster concept that combines multiple layers of information to generate a three-dimensional (3D) interface. It is claimed that the multilayer instrument cluster concept, which is targeted for full- and mid-size luxury vehicles, creates a more realistic view of the external environment for increased driving efficiency and safety.

French road operator APRR (Autoroute-Paris-Rhin-Rhône) has opted to replace obsolete sodium lamps with LED lighting in the 3.3km Chamoise Tunnel. The LEDs have four times the lifespan of high pressure sodium bulbs and are expected to cut energy use by 45 per cent, or some or 400,000kWh. Moreoever, APRR says the LED units also make lighting more uniform and colours are truer to their normal values, which helps drivers and the cameras that record incidents. Each tube of the tunnel will have 600 LED lamps, cos

German company myTaxi, which has revolutionised the European taxi market in less than a year, has extended its group of current investors. Daimler AG subsidiary company Car2go joins the board of the Hamburg-based company acquiring a minority stake. Lars Hinrichs, founder of XING and Hackfwd, is also added to the group of myTaxi shareholders. The existing investors T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom, and KfW Bankengruppe, all contributed to the capital increase to promote the rapid growth

Idle Free Systems, a leading provider of year-round idle elimination solutions for trucks and school buses, has announced a new business partnership with AmeriQuest Transportation Services through which the Idle Free electric APU system will be the first electric idle-elimination solution to be available directly to AmeriQuest members. AmeriQuest Transportation Services, with more than 1,500 customers representing 700,000 vehicles, is a privately-held transportation services company. As Jim Sweeny, VP of ca

Writing in the newsletter of TISPOL, an organisation established by the traffic police forces of Europe to improve road safety and law enforcement on the roads of Europe, Danijel Kumberger, National Traffic Police Unit, Slovenia, has revealed how smart the force has had to become to catch law-breaking truckers. As he points out, with automotive technical progress, it is vital to keep in touch with innovation because in modern vehicles, it is all about electronics, data sharing and processing of all kinds of

Bosch Automotive Aftermarket division is in the process of undertaking its largest ever acquisition with plans to acquire the service solutions business of US-headquartered SPX Corporation which develops, manufactures and sells diagnostic and service tools, workshop equipment, and software for the global automotive aftermarket. For 2011, the business, based in Warren, Missouri and which employs some 2,700 people in 17 countries, primarily in the US, Germany, France, and China, is expected to generate sales

Bus schedules in the Canadian city of Calgary will be more accurate and predictable as Xerox installs a new intelligent transportation system made up of computer-aided dispatch and vehicle location technologies. As part of a two and a half year, US$14.5 million contract, the computer-aided dispatch and automatic vehicle location (CAD/AVL) system will help Calgary Transit improve fleet management and on-time arrivals. Xerox will install the new system so Calgary Transit can track and dispatch all 986 buses a

RouteMatch Software has been selected by Nebraska Department of Roads (NDoR) to become the state's primary ITS partner, providing a standardised and integrated passenger transportation management technology platform for 13 Nebraska rural public and tribal transit agencies. The technologies address NDoR's primary goals of improving mobility management and creating seamless, consistent transit coordination amongst these agencies. The RouteMatch partnership will also allow NDoR to closely facilitate paratransi

Garmin has announced that it will transition its map provider for the majority of its Nuvi range of personal navigation devices (PNDs) to Navteq from February 2012. Garmin PNDs in Australia and New Zealand released from next month will join the majority of Garmin's global range that already use Navteq as a map provider. "Navteq has been Garmin's map provider in the United States and throughout most European countries for many years and they have invested heavily in the Australian and New Zealand markets to

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Mobisoft Oy and the Finnish Meteorological Institute, with support from partners, have developed a communication system for drivers to inform them about weather and road conditions and prevent serious or fatal accidents. When there is snow or ice on the road, the risk of an accident is increased by a factor of 4.1 compared to normal conditions, according to research conducted at the Tampere University of Technology.