Search

Having re-entered the ITS market, 3M is busy shaping the future technology for vehicle detection, tolling and parking, as Colin Sowman discovers. Having sold off its Opticom business in 2007, 3M effectively re-entered the ITS market last year paying $110 million for Federal Signal Technology Group (FSTech) – but why?

Being the first organisation attempting to implement an interoperable system poses challenges and increases risk that must be managed to realise the benefits. The European Electronic Toll Service (EETS) legislation aims to avoid the problems experienced in the USA and provide road users with seamless travel across the EU but it can pose big problems for some toll operators. Take, for instance, the case of the Humber Bridge in the UK. Its case was highlighted at the recent ITS World Congress by Tim Gammons,

The European Commission (EU) funded Cooperative Mobility Systems and Services for Energy Efficiency (eCoMove) project claims that traffic accounts for 23 per cent of CO2 emissions around the world. eCoMove aims to optimise driving behaviour and transport flow by ecologically optimised traffic management. The goal is to reduce the CO2 emissions by 20 per cent. The results were presented at the final event at the end of November.

The European Commission has granted funding of US$1.9 million of the total budget of US$2.5 million for the FOT-Net Data project, which aims to make traffic data collected in field operational tests (FOTs) more widely available to researchers. The three-year project will start in January 2014. The EU has supported a number of projects since 2008, enabling testing of the latest vehicle information technology in large-scale field trials. Drivers have been able to test the most promising prototypes or produ

John D Porcari, former deputy secretary, United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), has been named senior vice president and national director of Strategic Consulting at global infrastructure strategic consulting firm Parsons Brinckerhoff. As the head of Parsons Brinckerhoff’s strategic consulting group, Porcari will guide the firm’s efforts to integrate technical expertise with the strategic thinking needed by owners, developers, and operators of transportation infrastructure to solve critical

Specialist vehicle activated sign (VAS) and overhead vehicle detector (OVD) manufacturer Coeval Group has been acquired by QAS Asset Finance. Coeval’s owners, Nick Sharp and Gordon Bell have also announced their retirement after 26 years with the business. Coeval’s new managing director Gary Higgins was previously managing director of the TSEU Group that included Traffic Signals UK and Microsense Systems before they were acquired by Telent in 2008. He believes there are significant market opportunit

Dozens of UK towns and cities are set to benefit from government funding to tackle congested local roads and improve key points in the strategic road network, as well as new initiatives to drive forward rail electrification. Measures announced by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin include US$80 million from the Local Pinch Point Fund for 25 congestion-busting local roads schemes, building on 87 already announced this year; confirmation of nearly US$181 million for the M6-Heysham link road, along with

This month saw the start of e-tolling on the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) in South Africa, one of the largest electronic toll collection systems for open road tolling in the world, following an announcement by the country’s Minister of Transport, Dipuo Peters, in November. Kapsch TrafficCom reports that the number of active accounts has been consistently rising following the commencement of the e-toll project in Gauteng, on 3 December. Kapsch anticipates that this trend will continue. Kapsc

ITS Australia has elected its board of directors for 2014, from a strong list of nominees. ITS Australia chief executive officer Susan Harris said the Australian ITS industry was stepping forward to help produce a rewarding and successful ITS World Congress in 2016. “We had more nominations than Board vacancies, which is a sign that the industry is healthy,” said Susan Harris. “A field of enthusiastic industry leaders were nominated and they contested the election in good spirit. We congratulate the s

The Qatar Mobility Innovations Centre (QMIC) at the Qatar Science and Technology Park scooped two prestigious awards including the Innovation in Traffic Management award, and the Road Transport Technology award at this year’s Gulf Traffic exhibition and conference for its Masarak iTraffic system. Masarak is an intelligent platform and integrated suite of services developed by QMIC in partnership with the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning in Qatar. Masarak’s iTraffic system is a comprehensive so

Responding to the yesterday’s announcement that there is still no definitive answer to the location of the new Thames Crossing, the message from the Freight Transport Association (FTA) was “don’t delay and let the building begin to help improve capacity and ease congestion at Dartford as soon as possible”. The Government has stated that Option B connecting the A2 Swanscombe Peninsula with the A1089 has been ruled out of the process, but has failed to confirm as to where the new Lower Thames crossing wil

In a contract worth US$451.9 million, a consortium of CAF and Thales will supply Santiago’s metro operator with CAF trains controlled by Thales’ communication based train control (CBTC) system for lines 3 and 6 of the metro. The contract also includes a 20-year maintenance agreement. Thales will supply its fully automatic Seltrac CBTC solution, enabling the metro operator to increase the frequency of train services and passenger capacity. This is boosted by CAF’s new energy efficient rail cars, which of

Jason Barnes looks at Daimler’s Intelligent Drive programme to consider how machine vision has advanced the state of the art of vision-based in-vehicle systems. Traditionally, radar was the in-vehicle Driver Assistance System (DAS) technology of choice, particularly for applications such as adaptive cruise control and pre-crash warning generation. Although vision-based technology has made greater inroads more recently, it is not a case of ‘one sensor wins’. Radar and vision are complementary and redundancy

The launch of calls for proposals and related activities under the Horizon 2020 work programmes for 2014-15 has been announced. The launch of these calls also marks the launch of Civitas 2020, the next phase of the Civitas initiative which is designed to strengthen sustainable urban mobility across and beyond Europe. The first call, Mobility for Growth, focuses on innovation and technology projects in air, rail, road and waterborne transport, logistics, intelligent transport systems and infrastructure.

Scania will take the lead role in a three-year European research project to develop a system for implementing truck platooning on roads, which it is believed can significantly contribute towards reducing the carbon footprint of trucks. Through the European Companion research project, the partners will identify means of implementing the platooning concept in practice in daily transport operations. The project also includes Volkswagen Group Research, Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology, Oldenburger

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are testing efficiency software for the next six months to streamline traffic and improve air quality. The Freight Advanced Traveller Information Program is expected to reduce traffic congestion during peak hours by improving the information flow between truck fleets and port terminals, according to the ports. “By using Bluetooth proximity readers in and around the marine terminal in conjunction with dynamic routing, the system can communicate where congestion i

Connected services provider WirelessCar is to support Audi in China with call centre solutions, enabling location-based services, infotainment and information features WirelessCar works with the entire telematics network through a wide partner network of wireless providers, call centres, content providers, dealers, government institutions, and others to: explore leading industrial technology; positively get involved in industrial regulation and policies standardisation; and make continuous progress on bu

Mobileye’s Itay Gat discusses the evolution of monocular solutions for assisted and autonomous driving with Jason Barnes. Founded in 1999, Israeli company Mobileye manufactures and supplies advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) based on its EyeQ family of systems-on-chips for image processing for solutions such as lane sensing, traffic sign recognition, vehicle and pedestrian detection. Its products are used by both the OEM and aftermarket sectors. The company’s visual interpretation algorithms drive

A new report prepared by Ricardo for the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (LowCVP) to review the air quality impacts arising from the recent rapid increase in the number of low carbon buses in the UK recommends that the legislation needs to consider hybrid technology impacts in the test processes to avoid potential unintended consequences in terms of local emissions. As they mainly operate in urban areas, local emissions from buses are of particular significance. Reviewing worldwide test processes for

Iowa DOT’s Transportation Commission has unanimously approved proposed rules for red light and speed cameras that require cities to prove the devices are needed to improve safety on highways. The rules require a city to perform an engineering analysis of the highway and also present some alternatives to the cameras to address any safety issues. Cities that currently have cameras installed would have to do the engineering study by May 2014. The rules must still go through the legislative approval process