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A new study, Autonomous Driving, by Roland Berger Strategy consultants finds that automatic driving will generate additional revenue volume of up to US$40 billion in component sales in the period through 2030. In addition, new software solutions needed for automated driving will reach a global market volume as high as 20 billion dollars by 2030. There are specific technologies to be mastered, to a large extent unknown territory for both OEMs and suppliers and considerable investments will be needed to de

Swiss wireless communications specialist and Australia connected vehicle technology provider Cohda Wireless have joined forces to develop an advanced vehicle to vehicle/infrastructure (V2X) solution. Offering best in class performance, the MK5 was recently demonstrated at the 2014 ITS World Congress in Detroit and is suitable for first-mount automotive electronics, aftermarket products and roadside infrastructure. Cohda’s dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) based V2X system uses accurate satel

French funicular railway group POMA has formed a joint venture between Algiers metro company Entreprise du Métro d’Alger (EMA), and the Algiers urban and suburban transport company Entreprise de Transport Urbain et Suburbain d’Alger (ETUSA). The new company, Entreprise de Transport Algérien par Câbles (ETAC) will design, develop and construct the urban ropeway transportation network in Algeria. Algeria is the largest country in Africa, with a population of 39.21 million. It is also the country with the m

According to research by Bury-based online car supermarket JamJar Direct, which indicates that 47 per cent of Greater Manchester motorists claim to have been affected by the construction works, communications around the M60 smart motorway improvements are sorely lacking. Almost two thirds of Greater Manchester motorists (62 per cent) are aware that the M60 is being turned into a smart motorway, but over 40 per cent, equivalent to 81,000 vehicles per day using affected stretch of M60 between junctions 8 a

Andrew Bardin Williams looks at a novel option for new toll road authorities. While somewhat politically controversial, outsourcing has gained traction in the business world as a model worth investigating for its efficiency and cost saving benefits. Lean start-ups tend to employ independent contractors instead of full-time employees in an effort to remain flexible and avoid costs associated with pensions, retirement places, health insurance, office space and benefit packages.

Caroline Haynes tells ITS International that transport planners and equipment suppliers need to adopt different thinking and the smartest cities don’t call themselves smart. The term Smart Cities has been around for some time and has become something of a catch-all term applied to novel or futuristic technology deployed in an urban setting.

New projections, released today by the International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD during the COP20 climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru, highlight a critical choice for policy makers: whether to pursue urbanisation based on public transport or on private transport with cars and two-wheelers. Big cities in China, India and Latin America with over 500,000 inhabitants will more than double their share of world passenger transport emissions by 2050 to 20 per cent (2010: 9 per cent), if current urba

A European Parliament/Council deal on a life-saving automatic emergency call system for cars, agreed on Monday evening, was backed by Internal Market Committee MEPs on Thursday. The in-vehicle eCall system uses 112 emergency call technology to alert the emergency services to serious road accidents automatically. This enables them to decide immediately on the type and size of rescue operation needed, helping them to arrive faster, save lives, reduce the severity of injuries and cut the cost of traffic ja

A successful consortium led by the UK’s Transport research Laboratory (TRL) has been selected by Innovate UK to deliver the GATEway project (Greenwich Automated Transport Environment), one of three projects awarded to test driverless vehicles in UK urban locations. The US$12.5 million project will see three trials of different types of zero emission automated vehicles within an innovative, technology-agnostic testing environment set in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The ‘prime meridian’ was establi

Part of the Finnish intelligent transportation strategy, a new booking service for Russia-bound traffic at the Vaalimaa border crossing point in Finland aims to evaluate ways of reducing future peak-hour traffic, with the objective of streamlining traffic flow and increasing road safety by smoothing traffic volumes. The service becomes available for freight traffic on 15 December and for passenger traffic on 19 January 2015. The service is free of charge for users and is mandatory for all drivers using t

The International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA has responded to a new report released by the Eno Center for Transportation. How We Pay for Transportation: The Life and Death of the Highway Trust Fund looks at the current political, economic and legal forces behind the US Highway Trust Fund, including an examination of other countries and their lessons on providing long term sustainable funding for transportation. Patrick D. Jones, IBTTA executive director and CEO, said: “We salute the

Traffic management barriers developed by Belgian access control systems are being used on the Norra Länken motorway project in Sweden, supplied through its local partner Swarco. Built in cooperation with the city of Stockholm and co-financed by the European Union, Norra Länken is five kilometres long with four kilometres in tunnels and is said to be northern Europe’s largest road tunnel project. Two types of barrier have been installed on the project, the BL77 security barrier and the extra long BL52

The old fuel tax methods can no longer produce the funding required to maintain the infrastructure without a massive increase in duty rates. In this issue we get a variety of views on two of the hottest topics in transportation; financing models and Smart Cities.

Recently released publications from the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS-JPO) include the United States-Japan Evaluation Tools and Methods fact sheet and the United States-Japan-European Union Probe Data fact sheet.

Swiss based u-blox has acquired the automotive-grade Bluetooth and wi-fi module products of Lesswire, a subsidiary of the PRETTL group. Founded in 1999, Lesswire provides robust vehicle-ready short range wireless communication modules to Tier-1 automotive electronics suppliers in Europe and Asia.

Future highways will be made from self-healing, glow-in-the-dark materials and will be governed by sophisticated technologies that communicate with cars, road infrastructure and GPS systems, according to the Future of Highways report from global engineering and design consultancy, Arup.

Variable message signs have been installed on the Danish E20 highway between Odense and Copenhagen to give truck drivers real-time information on available parking areas. The highway, part of the Scandria corridor, carries some of the highest commercial vehicle volumes and connects capitals and metropolitan regions along the shortest route from Scandinavia via Central Europe to the Adriatic Sea. In the interests of road safety, truck drivers must adhere to strict travel and rest times.

TomTom’s Telematics business has acquired Fleetlogic, one of the leading fleet management service providers in the Netherlands, which the company says strengthens TomTom Telematics’ position as the market leader in the Netherlands and in Europe. The acquisition includes the companies TripXs and Inalise and adds 27,000 subscriptions to the TomTom Telematics installed base. The total installed base of TomTom Telematics now consists of more than 450,000 vehicles. "The fleet management market in the Net

European companies which have shared CO2 data and information on policies, strategy and intentions to reduce CO2 emissions from transport operations have been awarded the ‘first leaf’ by Green Freight Europe (GFE). The award is part of a four-tier labelling program by GFE that recognises and benchmarks members based on their efforts and measures to further improve on CO2 reduction. Heineken, IKEA, DHL, Hewlett Packard, Proctor and Gamble, TNT Europe, UPS and P&O Ferrymasters were among the first recipien

The EU's TEN-T Programme is to provide around US$500,000 to support preparatory and design studies for a network of safe and secure parking areas for truck drivers in Campania, Calabria and Sicily. The drivers will be able to pre-book parking and get reliable online information with the help of an integrated information service. The studies will be carried out in two phases. A preparatory study will identify the existing parking areas with the capacity for easy upgrade and potential new sites, while the