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Fostering ITS Policy, an international workshop jointly organised by TTS Italia (National Association for Telematics for Transport and Safety) and the IRF Policy Committee on ITS, aims to bring together key partners from the public, private and academic sectors in Italy to discuss ITS policy frameworks and developments in ITS university education. The workshop takes place as part of the New World Conference The New World II, the ITS for mobility management convention in Bologna on 5 December 2012 at Savoia

UK-headquartered IT consultancy firm Smart421 is to design, build and manage a new Live Sales Management system for Rail Settlement Plan (RSP). This system will provide the rail industry with a flexible, high availability cloud-based solution to support ticket on departure - the collection of rail tickets from self service ticket machines after purchasing them earlier on the web.

The results of two one-year electric vehicle (EV) trials carried out in the Netherlands and Sweden were presented at the European Electric Vehicle Congress (EEVC) 2012. All aspects of EVs were taken into account during these trials; results show that after an EV is integrated in people’s daily use, most preconceptions are proved wrong.

Welsh local authority Ceredigion County Council has adopted remotely hosted street lighting software from Mayrise Systems to give frontline staff and external contractors secure access to live service information on fault updates and current service levels. Ceredigion County Council also hopes to introduce mobile working, using the hosted solution, to improve both the safety and efficiency of maintenance workers. Mayrise Street Lighting utilises the latest Microsoft 2008 server and virtualisation technologi

A report released by the International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD highlights the role of national governments in improving pedestrian mobility and proposes twelve measures to create safer walking environments. The study, entitled Pedestrian Safety, Urban Space and Health, was prepared by a working group of transport experts and urban planners from nineteen countries and the World Health Organisation under the leadership of the ITF. The report comes to a number of conclusions, including the fact that

England’s least car dependent city, Nottingham, is to further develop its public transport system with integrated ticketing solutions from Germany-headquartered ITS provider INIT, which is to supply systems for the town’s bus and tram network. With more than 40 million customer journeys per year, Nottingham’s independent bus operator Trent Barton was already successfully using INIT’s integrated ticketing solution comprising of Electronic Ticketing Machines (ETM), validators and Mango smartcards. Passengers

Point Grey has announced what it claims as breakthrough in innovation with its new multi-interfaced Zebra2 camera line. The Zebra2 fulfils a growing demand in traffic and surveillance installations that require real-time viewing in addition to post-processing such as ALPR/ANPR and incident analysis. Available in both 2 MP and 5MP CCD models, the Zebra2 provides the ability to simultaneously stream low latency uncompressed video over HD-SDI as well as send compressed or uncompressed images through a Gigabit

Allied Vision Technologies (AVT) has announced important new additions to its Manta and Prosilica camera ranges. The Manta G-917 GigE Vision, which will be available later this year, is claimed to be the world’s first machine vision camera with a new 9-Megapixel sensor. This new 1“ sensor chip has 3384 x 2710 pixels resolution and delivers over 10 fps, offering excellent image quality, reduced smear, high quantum efficiency and increased NIR sensitivity. AVT says that with its high resolution approach pac

Derbyshire based Mobile Visual Information Systems (MVIS) and Safety Vehicle Hire and Lease (SVHL) from Leicestershire have joined forces in a deal that they say will not only enable wider market access to the latest generation of variable message signs (VMS), but which they hope will also promote the case for legislative evolution facilitating the greater efficiency of the UK’s road network. MVIS supplies mobile and solar powered monitoring and visual information systems, including VMS, to the traffic mana

Denmark’s electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure is to be expanded with the installation of fifty smart DC fast chargers. Electric mobility operator Clever has chosen power and automation technology group ABB to supply and maintain the fast chargers throughout Denmark. The companies say the ABB Terra 51 chargers, which are to be installed at strategic locations in the country, are ideally suited for freeway driving and has the capacity to fast charge electric vehicles in a matter of thirty minutes.

Dutch digital security provider Gemalto is to provide South Africa’s Standard Bank with a multifunction contactless payment card enabling users to pay for transit fares and other goods and services with one digital wallet. Standard Bank customers can now use the new MasterCard debit card to wave and pay at the gates in the public transport stations, without needing to carry cash or a separate travel card. The bank says the "Muvo" card initiative will help cardholders gain greater convenience while at the s

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is undertaking a pilot project to test the next generation of a road usage charge system designed to address funding gaps caused by a rise in fuel efficiency and a decline in gas tax revenue. Around forty volunteers have begun testing the new system, where, instead of paying the gas tax, automatically added at the pump, pilot participants will pay a per mile charge based on the number of miles they drive. The charge is roughly equal to the amount of gas tax the

UK company CA Traffic has combined its Evo8 ANPR camera and Black Cat traffic monitoring technology to provide weigh in motion (WIM) and speed violation detection with high quality ANPR data. Both systems are configured with the local classification scheme, maximum road speed, vehicle speed and weight limits by class. Vehicle data (class, speed and weight) is sent from the Black Cat system to the EVo8, which checks for compliance with the data set for the road. Speed or weight violations cause the system

UK company Chargepoint Services has partnered with France-based DBT to distribute their Rapid Charge Unit for electric vehicles. The DC chargers can recharge an electric vehicle, such as the Nissan Leaf, to approximately 80 per cent battery capacity in just 20-30 minutes, but costs around 60% less than other rapid chargers currently on the market today. The company says this could help revolutionise electric vehicle travel, making longer journeys “range-anxiety free” by bringing refuelling times closer to

Imagsa’s latest Atalaya automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) camera is more flexible and has more processing power, thanks to the company’s proprietary FPGA processor coupled to a CMOS sensor which allows the camera to operate at 270 frames per second. Although Imagsa say this isn’t necessarily needed for ANPR, the camera works under any conditions and at this frame rate can accurately detect a vehicle ten times in three metres at speeds of up to 250 km/h, even in heavy rain or in direct sunlight.

Expansion of ITS systems has accelerated in Qatar this year, with rapid deployment of a traffic control system in Doha. Less than 10 years from now an extensive system of ITS technology will be operating in Qatar, informing and directing users of the country’s roads. That can be stated with confidence for a number of reasons: the world’s richest country per capita will host the World Cup in 2022 and is understood to be planning to develop sophisticated systems of ITS for road safety and traffic managemen

Established detection and monitoring technologies continue to evolve, but is it time to challenge their supremacy and take a serious look at less conventional ITS? Andy Graham considers the options with Jason Barnes. For ITS system providers, the most potentially lucrative markets over the next few years are going to be the BRIC (Brazil Russia India and China) group of countries, all of which are building many miles of new roads, applying tolling to existing ones (8,000km in China alone) and implementing w

A marriage of transit, technology and culture is taking shape in Minneapolis, with ITS systems vital to hopes for a sustainable development centred on a hub of public transportation. Construction started in July this year on ‘The Interchange’ – a station in the Midwest US city of Minneapolis claimed as the most spectacular expression yet of the fast-spreading North American concept of transit-oriented development (TOD). Due for completion in 2014, the Interchange is designed as a multi-modal public transpor

Lisbon city council in Portugal is to set up a new CCTV system in order to monitor the road traffic on the streets of the capital. The system will help the council to enforce traffic penalties on drivers of old pollutant vehicles who are banned from certain central areas, the Reduced Emissions Zones (ZER). ZERs were implemented in 2011 for vehicles with registrations prior to 1992; this was later extended to include cars registered before 1996. However, the city council’s lack of resources means that to da

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has highlighted the importance of road safety in preventing more than one million people from dying and many more from getting injured each year in traffic accidents. “This year, the world's roads have claimed some 1.2 million lives,” Mr. Ban said in his message marking World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. “Added to the fatalities are the more than 50 million people injured each year – many of them now condemned to enduring physical disabilities and psychologic