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London's commuters will be able to use their mobile phones and bank cards for travel across the city, if Transport for London's (TfL) plans come to fruition. Thousands of London bus users already pay their fares using contactless bank cards instead of TfL Oyster cards, which have been widely used over the past decade. Users pay different charges for different London Underground zones and for train travel, so TfL has to decide on suitable payment mechanisms, and could drive the widespread adoption of systems

The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) today announced the hire of Sabrina Sussman as the association’s vice president for Membership and Development. Previously with the US Department of Transportation, Sussman will lead the strategic planning efforts and enactment of the ITS America Leadership Circle, as well as manage member recruitment, retention and services. ITS America’s president and CEO Scott Belcher stated, “Sabrina’s unique combination of transportation policy, strategic

Motorists in Abu Dhabi will now be able to get alerts about accidents and traffic jams from numerous variable message signs (VMS) currently being installed on the capital’s roads. At least 86 (VMS) will notify motorists of road blocks, construction and weather updates, giving them the opportunity to change their route if necessary. More than half will be equipped with traffic monitoring stations to record data from their areas and send the information to a central data centre. CCTV will also transmit road

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD is to build an assembly plan in Lancaster, about seventy miles north of Los Angeles, to make electric buses for US and Latin American public transportation markets. The facility will be one of only a few making electric buses in the US, where most buses use diesel fuel or compressed natural gas. Michael Austin, vice president of BYD America, said Lancaster's aggressive embrace of solar energy programs was a factor in deciding to build the plant there. "They've been

Columbus, Ohio is to benefit from a US$38.1 million traffic management system to replace the one installed in the 1970s to allow the city to respond more quickly to problem areas and speed up travel throughout Columbus and even in its suburbs. The new system will wrap all signals into a single network. More data will funnel to new software in the traffic-management center, where operators can decide how to handle traffic congestion. Nearly 500 miles of fibre-optic cable will run to most traffic signals, and

Co-Cities Prime provides an opportunity for cities and regions which want to provide integrated multimodal transport and set up mobility services with the opportunity to equip their information systems with the Commonly Agreed Interface of Co-Cities supported by an experienced technology provider. Up to 50 per cent of the implementation effort will be contributed by the Co-Cities project. The call for participation is open from April 3rd to May 5th, 2013, and city administrations, urban transport authoriti

The challenging topic of tolling collection will be a priority theme at the 2013 National Electronic Tolling Committee Industry Forum (NeTC) to be held 22 and 23 May at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in Queensland, Australia. The forum will also feature a strong focus on government-industry policy development to facilitate systems deployment to maximise safety, economic, environmental and social benefits to transport in Australia and the Asia Pacific region. "The comprehensive forum program w

Thales, as a member of the Eurodom consortium, has supplied communication, supervision, signalling and ticketing systems for line 2 of the Santo Domingo Metro in the Dominican Republic. The opening of the metro line, which crosses the city from east to west, is a key milestone in a national plan to improve public transport and relieve congestion on the road network. It connects to the north-south line 1 and once complete, will run for 21 km and will have twenty stations. Fourteen stations are now open and t

Bristol mayor George Ferguson is in talks with the city’s Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens to consider switching speed cameras back on in the city. The city’s thirty-seven fixed point speed cameras and traffic light cameras were switched off in April 2011 as part of a nationwide cost-cutting exercise. It was left to local authorities to make the final decision on whether to cut the deterrents. The Bristol Safecam partnership was abolished, leaving the cameras, twenty of which were red light c

To make the toll collection process on the national highways easier and more transparent, the Indian government will roll out RFID-based electronic toll collection (ETC) across all the toll plazas on national highways throughout the country by 2014. "By 2014, we intend to have by ETC on all toll plazas in the country,” Road Transport Minister C P Joshi said. He added that pilot projects have already been launched on some national highways. Based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, ETC uses

Australia’s National Roads and Motorists' Association (NRMA) has praised the New South Wales (NSW) government's plan to use revenue raised by speed cameras to help boost funding for road safety programs by US$7.3 million. The new Safer Roads Program is part of the Centre for Road Safety's state-wide strategy aimed at cutting the state's road toll by thirty per cent by 2021. The additional funds will see a total of US$37.6 million a year spent on works in areas where the worst crashes are occurring, with the

Drivers in Massachusetts may no longer need to worry about having cash on hand as they hit toll roads. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) is planning to replace every tollbooth in the state with electronic tolling systems that read E-ZPass transponders in cars and send monthly bills to drivers who use toll roads without passes. “We’re trying to look at doing things faster, more efficiently and provide more information to the public,” said MassDOT Highway Administrator Frank DePaola.