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International engineering group Egis has partnered with tolling ITS solutions provider Actoll to create TollSys, developer of tolling back office software solutions. TollSys will benefit from business process controls and project management provided by Egis, while Actoll will provide its Ticks software publishing and expertise in toll software development. Its Ticks BPMN studio platform will form the development tool for back office software.

Vaisala's collaboration with the Idaho Transportation Department has been recognised by the US Road Safety Foundation and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) as winners of the biennial National Roadway Safety Awards. The award winners were chosen for reducing fatalities and injuries on roadways through excellence and innovation in operations, planning, and design. The Idaho Transportation Department, using Vaisala's pavement sensors that calculate grip or friction values, found that this value can als

The transport and communications ministry (SCT) in Mexican consortium is to go ahead with the 62 kilometre Siglo XXI highway concession in Morelos state. The US$211 million contract to build, operate and maintain the concession has been awarded to a consortium of Pinfra, Grupo Bursátil Mexicano and Aldesa Mexico. The SCT confirmed that tenders for the 80 kilometre Atizapán-Atlacomulco and the 70 kilometre Guanajuato-San Miguel de Allende highway are under way.

During a recent debate on connected vehicles, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) highlighted that intelligent transport systems (ITS) are widely used within the road transport sector to improve efficiency, especially for fleet management, but also in fuel reduction and locating safe and secure parking. While new developments are also seeing communication between vehicles and road infrastructure, resulting in quicker, safer and more fuel efficient journeys, the IRU stressed the need for common s

The latest report from MarketsandMarkets forecasts the global transportation safety and transportation security market to grow from US$37.80 billion in 2013 to US$62.96 billion in 2018, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.7 per cent from 2013 to 2018. North America (NA) is expected to be the biggest contributor in terms of revenue contribution, while the growing markets Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America (LA), are expected to experience increased market traction

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) is expected to call a tender for the installation of the next generation of electronic road pricing (ERP) system as early as the first half of 2014. Although there is potential for it to go island-wide, initially the ERPII system will utilise the current network of some 70 gantries, charging drivers each time they pass a gantry. If all goes well, a satellite-based system, which charges motorists for the distance they travel in the priced zones, will be up and r

A push by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to use technology to reduce traffic fatalities aims to keep drunk drivers off the roads by using in-vehicle technology that immobilises their cars. They are pushing for systems that prevent drivers from starting their cars, help cars avoid collisions and prevent vehicles from starting if the occupants don’t wear seat belts. "Ninety per cent of all crashes have an element of human error," NHTSA administrator David Strickland said. "We really

TomTom has announced a partnership with UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. TomTom’s global Traffic Index data will be used by UN-Habitat and its stakeholders around the world to make strategic decisions when tackling urban congestion. Recently TomTom released the sixth edition of its Traffic Index which revealed a clear pattern of increased congestion. Commuters around the world are spending on average eight working days stuck in traffic. This shows that traditional responses li

From young professionals to lifetime achievers, the ITS Australia awards ceremony recognised leading industry contributors at the end of a busy 2013 event calendar. Winners were announced before more than 110 industry leaders in Melbourne last week and the Awards program was well supported with nominations from a wide cross section of industry sectors. Winners included Keith Aldridge who was posthumously awarded the Max Lay lifetime achievement award for his creative vision, passion and dedication to

A fleet of 130 virtual electric cars is set to appear on the roads of Munich, Germany, where the Technische Universität München (TUM) is to provide participating companies with smartphones that will be installed in taxis and commercial vehicles to track their movements. The phones will record the exact location of the vehicle via GPS, along with driving behaviour such as acceleration, deceleration and turns. The phone’s software will then calculate the energy consumption for a freely configured electric

Working closely with partners from Puget Sound-area transit and planning organizations to implement a multimodal-system analysis, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has produced its new Corridor Capacity Report to explain how transportation system efficiency would improve if travellers made better use of available capacity across all modes of transportation. In addition to updates on vehicle miles travelled, state-wide delay and the cost of this delay to Washingtonians, the report

A partnership between premium car manufacturer Audi and the international traffic technology group Swarco recently demonstrated their achievements in vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication as part of the European Compass4D project. The demonstration in the Italian city of Verona involved connecting the city's traffic management system, which is based on Swarco's Omnia platform, with Audi's onboard navigation system. By comparing its current position, speed and driving direction, the vehicle re

International Road Dynamics (IRD) announced today that it has received a US$1.6 million contract to provide a weigh-in-Motion (WIM) sorter system for a new commercial vehicle enforcement facility (CVEF) near Mountain Pass, California. This system will be used by enforcement personnel to select and direct commercial vehicles into the CVEF. IRD will supply an integrated system including its industry-leading single load cell (SLC) WIM scales and advanced iSINC controller electronics. A total of sixteen SLC

ITS Italy will host the final event of the European COMPASS (Optimised CO-Modal PASSenger Transport for reducing carbon emissions) project. The 25-month project examined how social, economical, environmental and technological changes will affect transport and derived the key challenges for future policy and planning. Its results will be delivered at the final conference on 13 November in Rome and will include recommendations on improving data collection in passenger transport. The draft programme c

Canada has been selected to host the 2017 ITS World Congress. Three Canadian and nine American cities vied to host the conference and after lengthy deliberation the International Committee settled on Montreal. The last World Congress in Canada was in Toronto in 1999 which attracted over 5,000 delegates. ITS Canada says the Montreal Congress will be even bigger and is promising it will be a year the world of transportation will remember!

ITS America has appointed ITS United Kingdom members Finella McKenzie and Dr John Miles as editors for a revision of the PIARC ITS Handbook. PIARC is the common acronym of the World Road Association and the appointment comes under the auspices of a US Department of Transportation contract which will see the publication updated from the last (2004) edition and developed as an online knowledge resource.

ITS America’s Leadership Circle, now with 34 members strong, has staged its second Thought Leadership Forum. The two-day forum focused on innovation and the evolving role of the transportation technology ecosystem, as well as the development of a new problem-solving business model to accelerate investment in ITS technologies. The forum included sessions on creative destruction, disruptive technologies, urban mobility, industry trends, connected vehicles and infrastructure, big data challenges and emergi

More than 200 South and Southern African ITS stakeholders met at the biennial International i-Transport Conference and Exhibition to seek transport solutions that improve efficiencies and safety while reducing the carbon footprint. This year saw the event host its largest exhibition to date with both local and international exhibitors. ITS South Africa’s CEO, Dr Paul Vorster, said: “ITS deployment in South Africa is shaping up very well and with the large number of new Integrated Rapid Transport Systems

A new app that connects a vehicle’s systems to the internet opens up a range of possibilities as Jon Masters discovers. Sometimes the most straightforward or simple of ideas can be the most significant. So it seems with the latest development from Hungarian navigation software supplier NNG. The company’s software features in-vehicle infotainment systems and has launched NavFusion – which connects a vehicles’ sat nav programs to smartphones. NavFusion is being incorporated into NNG’s iGO navigation s

Citizen reporting offers the potential of gathering timely information about road conditions without the need to invest heavily in equipment or to dispatch inordinate numbers of staff to visit and report from various locations. What could be better than an army of motorists and other road users sending in reports of conditions they encounter on their journeys? Back in 2003, Wyoming DOT set up a system of enhanced citizen-assisted reporting as a way of gathering weather-related information on road conditi