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Information technology provider Indra used the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona to demonstrate its contactless smart card that the company aims to develop into a card that integrates access to all services that require identification, access control or payment. Indra says this will provide increasingly personalised services, whilst offering the convenience of integrating everything into a single medium.

City officials in Washington, DC, are launching a two-year test of technology that they hope will ease traffic gridlock and improve public safety in the city. In 2013, they will begin connecting traffic signals to existing high-speed network cables that run beneath the city streets. Once connected to the network, the signals will be equipped with video cameras and wi-fi hot spots. The test program will cover traffic lights at 16 intersections. According to governing.com the DC metro area regularly turns up

Easytrip, Ireland’s largest provider of electronic tolling payment services has launched new Charge2Mobile toll payment service, in partnership with O2. Said to be the first of its kind, the service will provide a more convenient channel for paying tolls on Ireland’s M50 for car drivers who currently pay by cash. Available immediately to O2 customers in Ireland, Easytrip hopes to roll out its Charge2Mobile tolls offering across other networks over the coming months and to add to its support team for this ne

McCain, manufacturer and supplier of intelligent transportation systems, traffic control equipment and parking guidance solutions, has announced distributor partnerships with Quality Traffic Systems and M H Corbin. Both companies will represent McCain’s full line of traffic control equipment within their respective territories of Georgia and Ohio. “We are always looking for like-minded businesses to partner with,” said Nathan Welch national sales manager at McCain Inc. “Quality Traffic and M H Corbin are ju

In the UK, the necessary radio spectrum has been identified and standardised technology developed to allow cost effective wireless communication between cars, devices and other ‘machines’. This by Professor William Webb. A world free of traffic congestion, with intelligent systems directing vehicles and alerting drivers to free parking spaces may sound a far off fantasy to motorists stuck in seemingly endless queues on the outskirts of London. Yet this is a scenario not confined to the world of science fict

Nick Lanigan, managing director of Clearview Traffic, considers the current outlook in the ITS sector from an SME's perspective. Interview with Jason Barnes. When times are hard, businesses can invest or cut. Either way, they need guidance from customers – governments – on where best to concentrate their efforts. Prolonged economic slowdown is currently an issue. A short recession, however sharp, would have left many industry players able to ride the bow-wave of governments’ multi-year spending on strategic

SQLstream’s Ronnie Beggs discusses with Jason Barnes the potential and pitfalls of using social media for traffic monitoring and management. cataclysmic events such as hurricanes and tsunami have challenged perceptions of what constitutes robust traffic management infrastructure in recent times. Presumptions that only fixed systems could offer high levels of unbroken service, accuracy and communication bandwidth, have been taught some hard lessons by nature. In many respects wireless systems now represent t

Pete Goldin reports on a new Egis project in Canada, providing open road tolling operations for the widest bridge in the world. A bridge can present a bottleneck in a system of roads or it can support the smooth and unobstructed flow of traffic. Much depends on the bridge design, surrounding infrastructure and tolling system. By adding lanes and deploying open road tolling (ORT), the new Port Mann Bridge located in the metropolitan Vancouver area in British Columbia, will alleviate congestion at one of the

Preparations for hosting the major sporting event, the Euro 2012 European football championship, enabled Ukraine and Poland to give their infrastructure the biggest facelift in the region and beyond. While three-quarters of Poland's expenditure was covered by EU funds, Ukraine financed the building of roads, hotels, and airports itself. Ukraine, however, did receive a EUR 2.2 billion loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). "The infrastructure sector will definitely remain one

The Manaus metro in the city of Amazonas in the heart of the Amazon is to be equipped with Thales’ automated driverless monorail solution, following the award to the company of its second signalling Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC) project in Brazil in less than a year for the The signalling contract was awarded to Thales by the Monotrilho Manaus Consortium, comprising CR Almeida, Mendes Junior, and Serveng-Civilsan e Scomi. The 20 km monorail will be a fully automated driverless system using Thale

Berlin wants to expand its role as the showcase city for electromobility. The charging infrastructure within the capital is to increase from 100 to 300 by 2013 and to 800 by the end of 2015. The Berlin senate has released a corresponding EU-wide tender. Germany Trade & Invest will present the industry’s latest prospects and developments at this year's "The Battery Show" in Detroit. An increasing number of municipalities have consulted the Federation of German Industry for Electromobility for information reg

Customers in Massachusetts Bay on the US east coast can now purchase and then display rail tickets and passes using the MBTA mTicket app for iPhone and Android. Blackberry devices will also be supported soon. Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Masabi US, the transit mobile ticketing provider, jointly announced the launch of the US’ first full smartphone commuter rail ticketing system. The tickets are displayed on the phone’s screen as an encrypted barcode and as a human readable ticket.

A new 3G wireless communications solution which allows Siemens UTMC OTUs to be connected to the company’s PC SCOOT UTC instation has been launched by the company following extensive field trials. The newly released 3G option is available on Gemini2 and is provided by the use of an approved 3G router and antenna kit and is quick and easy to install. It allows junctions to be added onto the UTC system without the need for physically wired or fibre links, reducing installation and civil engineering costs. Acc

An ambitious programme of new and upgraded interoperable toll systems has been launched in India, featuring far-reaching technology developments. David Crawford reports. In April this year, Indian Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways CP Joshi inaugurated a new era of electronic toll collection (ETC) in India when he unveiled the country’s first RFID-based tolling installation. This was at a recently-completed plaza at Chandimandir, near the city of Panchkula in the northern state of Haryana. The sys

Grand plans have been announced for transport investment in India aimed at boosting city economies. India’s Government Secretary for Urban Development Sudhir Krishna explains all to Jason Barnes. There are many reasons for developed countries’ high levels of urbanisation, not least of which is that the types of employment to be found in towns and cities tend to generate relatively greater wealth and so make greater contributions to a country’s economy. That creates the imperative for developing nations to f

Australia’s National Transport Commission (NTC) wants cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS) technology to be considered in the country. In a recently-released discussion paper, the NTC states the technology, which allows vehicles and other parts of the road network to communicate, could save 300 lives on the nation’s roads each year. The paper discusses the technology that is currently being trialled in the US and Europe by auto manufacturers and governments to allow drivers to plan their trips

According to the latest report by independent technical consultancy SBD, End User Survey for Consumer Needs in South East Asia, 85 per cent of south-east Asian drivers already use some form of navigation each month. SBD surveyed 2,400 drivers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand and implemented its consumer profiling tool to find out what connected services these drivers likely to need. South-east Asia has long been an afterthought market for the telematics industry, largely due to its poor road infrastruct

Royal HaskoningDHV, Netherlands-headquartered international engineering consultancy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Turkey’s Hakan Kiran Architecture for the design of the new Kabatas Seagull Transportation Hub in Istanbul. The multi modal transportation hub will connect ferry, metro, tram, bus and normal traffic and is to be located on the western shore of the Bosporus in Istanbul. The project will include an underpass for vehicles, a metro station, a tram station and ferry docks, and will

The Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) has extended its contract with Q-Free for the servicing and maintenance of the congestion charging infrastructure in Stockholm. Valued at approximately US$3.13 million the contract has been extended for a year, starting 1 January 2013, Q-Free’s CEO, Oyvind Isaksen, said, “We see Sweden as a very important and exciting market going forward. Our continuing participation in service and maintenance activities is essential for our local presence and not at lea

The preliminary programme for the IRF Road Safety Across Six Continents Seminar is now available, and space is limited. The seminar takes place 2-12 December 2012 at Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista, Orlando, Florida, USA, and is one of the most comprehensive road safety training programs in the world. Experts from a variety of countries will present best practices and state of the art technologies in roadside safety, work zone safety, vulnerable user safety, traffic management and road safety audits over a