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Kapsch CarrierCom has won a further order worth US$56 million from the Polish railway company PKP for the design, delivery and installation of the GSM-R train radio system on the stretch of line E20 from Kunowice to Terespol. The 26-month project will be implemented in cooperation with local partner Torpol. Kapsch will install 114 base transceiver stations (BTS) at 57 locations. In addition, base station controllers (BSC), transcoder units (TCU) and packet control unit support nodes (PCUSN) will be supp

Sensys Traffic is to supply a long-standing customer in Malta with speed enforcement systems and support services in a three-year order worth around US$1 million for traffic speed enforcement. The customer will pay a fixed monthly fee for a period of three years. Deliveries are expected to take place in the first quarter 2014.

According to recent research by Frost & Sullivan, there is a palpable reorientation of purchasing habits among American citizens as the country continues its march toward urbanism. In the future, 85 percent of the country’s population is anticipated to live in urban areas, while North America could see the emergence of three mega cities, eleven mega regions, and seven smart cities by 2025. One of the biggest gainers of this massive-scale urbanisation is the automotive industry, particularly autonomous drivi

The European Programme Committee has issued a call for ITS experts to submit a Special Interest Session proposal or a paper to be considered for presentation and publication at the 10th European Congress and Exhibition on Intelligent Transport Systems and Services taking place in Helsinki, Finland, 16–19 June, 2014. Technical papers may address the institutional, business and economic aspects of ITS as well as technical subjects; Scientific papers should concentrate on research and scholarship as they wi

The European Union will use over US$15 million from the Ten-T programme to co-finance two initiatives for the extension of Vienna’s tri-modal port container handling capacity and a project to upgrade the transport link between northern Sweden and western Finland. The project to extend Vienna’s tri-modal port will receive funds of over US$7 million and includes studies and works which will help eliminate major bottlenecks in the port's transfer and combination capacity. The studies will plan and design

Deal values for global transactions of transport infrastructure assets including airports, ports and road operations have risen steeply since the beginning of the year with 2013 poised to be a record year for transport infrastructure deals, according to an analysis by global advisory firm KPMG. The first half of 2013 saw global deals of infrastructure assets worth US$16.6 billion, by the end of the third quarter this figure had risen to US$23.5 billion, which already exceeds total annual deal values fo

Japan will not only host this year’s ITS World Congress but has been selected for the 2020 Olympics. So what can Japan, and indeed Brazil, learn from the traffic management for London 2012 - Geoff Hadwick finds out. It was a key moment when Olympic boss Jacques Rogge signed off London 2012, calling the Games “happy and glorious.” Scarred by the logistical disaster of Atlanta 1996 and the last-minute building panic for Athens 2008, Rogge clearly thought London 2012 was an object lesson in how to plan and

Following violent protests from HGV drivers in France, the country's planned introduction of their distance-based eco-tax scheme has now been suspended. French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici has announced plans to renegotiate the contract concluded with Italian-led consortium Ecomouv, charged with implementing the country's controversial heavy goods vehicle (HGV) eco-tax, to minimise the cost of the levy for taxpayers in France. He emphasised that although the HGV tax has indeed been suspended in the

Danish wireless technology company Blip Systems and its Canadian partner G4Apps have installed wireless sensors to help reduce traffic congestion on one of Ontario’s busiest highways, the Queen Elizabeth Way, which averages close to 200,000 vehicles per day. The Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is using Blip Systems’ combined Bluetooth and wi-fi sensors to verify travel time prediction algorithms. BlipTrack sensor are mounted on posts at strategic points in the road network and detect wireless

'Smart' road barriers that will speed up emergency response times to crash sites are being trialled in South Australia. The wire rope technology, designed in South Australia, is expected to improve crash response times by sending an electronic message direct to the city's traffic management centre when a vehicle crashes into the barrier. The technology has been installed on one of the state's most notorious roads and will be trialled for a year at a cost of US$112,000. If successful, the government wi

A consortium of Kapsch TrafficCom Russia, Kapsch TrafficCom and Russian company JSC (NIS) have successfully pre-qualified and are now set to work on the next stage of the tender for the development of Russia’s nationwide tolling system for heavy vehicles. The system, based on the use of the GLONASS/GPS satellite signal, will target vehicles with a maximum authorised weight of more than 12 tonnes. The project duration is thirteen years. The consortium unites Kapsch and NIS in a joint venture that has a

In a deal worth around US$16 million, Siemens, in association with local construction company BAM, is supplying the road and tunnel technology for the Leidsche Rijn tunnel in the Dutch city of Utrecht. Siemens will also maintain the installed technology for a period of three years. Handover of the tunnel is scheduled for summer 2015. The 495 metre long tunnel is designed to relieve traffic congestion in the new Leidsche Rijn district which is currently under construction to the west of Utrecht. The new t

City-bound traffic on Sydney’s M5 came to a standstill when the partly raised body of a truck struck the roof of the M5 East tunnel causing extensive damage. This video clip on the BBC’s website shows the incident unfolding

A joint venture between Egis Projects and Sanef is paving the way for a new Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and transponder-based ‘hub’ for nationwide tolling interoperability in the US. The joint venture, called Secure Interagency Flow LLC, has an agreement with the Alliance for Toll Interoperability (ATI) and operations are due to start by the end of this year. The final contract signings took place at the recent IBTTA conference in Vancouver and within the joint venture Egis will focus on opera

Development engineers from leading image processing companies worldwide met at the end of October under the patronage of G3, comprising the three international machine vision associations EMVA, AIA and JIIA for this years’ second International Standards Meeting. The experts discussed the development of the current standards used in image processing and tested the products and their compatibility with the standards. Key discussions included: The GenICam software standard meeting agreed to force the devel

Spanish technology company Indra will demonstrate its smart city solutions at the Barcelona Smart City Expo World Congress for applications such as energy efficiency, smart and sustainable urban transport, security and e-Government. The Indra urban platform for smart cities management and safety will be demonstrated, showing the company’s solution for major city management that facilitates the exchange of information between various systems and offers a complete overview of activities in order to adapt s

The Thai government hopes to immediately kick-start its infrastructure investment spending as soon as the US$63.26bn borrowing bill is passed. The massive investment is expected to help reduce logistics costs and turn Thailand into an Asean transport hub. The plans include building four-lane roads and widening existing two-lane roads to four lanes, construction of five dual track rail lines and improvement of existing routes, some of which could begin immediately, together with 41 new customs checkpoints. F

A study by business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan predicts Brazil’s electric vehicle fleet is set to increase 46-fold over the next four years as local energy firms prioritise the development of carbon-free technology, and by 2017 will boast 5,700 electric cars, up from 125 at the end of 2012. Brazil ranks as the world's fourth most important automotive market, with [an] electric vehicle (EV) and supporting infrastructure market that has immense potential for growth if automakers decide to invest in i

The busy ferry port of Salthomen, close to Gothenburg, Sweden has resolved its parking problem with the installation of a Sensit wireless parking sensor system developed by Dutch parking specialists Nedap. Parking bays are equipped with floor-mounted Sensit wireless sensors to detect in real-time whether or not a bay is occupied and for how long. The sensors are integrated with the Gothenburg’s existing P-IN parking management systems and information on available spaces is displayed on dynamic messages s

Japanese wireless technology expert Kyocera Corporation and Telenor Connexion, provider of connected business solutions for M2M, have announced a partnership agreement to supply M2M solutions for the international premium car market. The companies say OEMs with applications in need of high speed connection and instant access such as car telematics and on-board units for intelligent transport systems, smart metering, telemetry and security will benefit from reduced time to market and future-proof connecti