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The European Commission yesterday launched its Sustainable Urban Mobility campaign, a three-year initiative aiming to support sustainable urban mobility campaigners in 31 countries, with the opening of a registration system to support outstanding actions for fostering positive change in attitudes and behaviour.

The Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) have moved a step forward to foster closer knowledge sharing with the launch of the UITP Centre for Transport Excellence (CTE) and the first LTA-UITP Singapore International Transport Congress and Exhibition (SITCE) which will be held in October 2013.

Telvent GIT has announced that it is working together with the Chinese cities of Nanning, Fushun and Erdos to implement its SmartMobility technology aimed at intelligent urban and mobility management to enable local authorities to make the most of their road infrastructures. These cities are expected to lower the current number of traffic delays by over 35 per cent and the inner-city commute rate is anticipated to drop by around 15 per cent.

Wabtec Corporation has signed contracts worth about US$25 million to provide components, including on-board positive train control (PTC) equipment, for 50 new transit cars being built by Hyundai-Rotem. The cars will be used on new commuter rail lines being built by Denver Transit Partners in Colorado. Several Wabtec units will provide the equipment for the cars: Wabtec Passenger Transit (brakes and couplers), Wabtec Railway Electronics (PTC equipment), Bach-Simpson (event recorders) and Vapor Stone (doors)

Point Grey, one of the world's largest and most innovative manufacturers of industrial digital cameras for machine vision, bioscience, traffic, and GIS applications is celebrating 15 years in business. Founded in 1997, the company has evolved from a handful of university students to a thriving global business pushing the boundaries of imaging technology. The company has grown to offer a comprehensive portfolio of over 115 camera models used in a variety of industries including machine vision, bioscience, tr

Parsons Brinckerhoff has been selected by the Odense Municipality to assist with project management and provide strategic and economic advice on the Odense light rail project in Odense, Denmark. The first phase of the project is in the early planning stages, with a pre-feasibility study completed. Concept design starts in August 2012, and will feed into an environmental impact assessment report that will be presented to the Danish Transport Ministry in late 2013. Following the presentation, the project will

The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) in the US has announced that the 4th Edition of the Model Minimum Uniform Crash Criteria (MMUCC) Guideline has been posted online at www.mmucc.us. The voluntary guideline helps states determine what data to collect at the scene of a motor vehicle crash. The Guideline will, among other things, help states better capture data for emerging issues such as distracted driving, secondary crashes and incidents on private property as well as determine the level of seri

Atwec Technologies, a US-based child safety company, has announced that demand for its Kiddie Voice child alarm systems has increased in Florida due to a new law requiring child safety alarms to be installed in all day care centre vehicles in Miami-Dade County by 1 December, 2012. An ordinance requiring all licensed day care centres in Miami-Dade County to install alarms that prompt drivers of vehicles transporting children to check for children upon vehicle shut off became effective in February 2012. The o

Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), and Norbert Reithofer, chairman of the BMW, have announced the planned expansion of their existing cooperation initiated in December last year. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at a long-term strategic collaboration in four fields: joint development of a fuel cell system, joint development of architecture and components for a future sports vehicle, collaboration on powertrain electrification and joint research and de

One in 30 UK employees have drugs in their system at any point in time within the workplace, according to new statistics released today by Concateno, Europe’s leading drug and alcohol screening provider. These findings, part of the ‘High Society: Drug Prevalence in the UK workplace’ research report, are derived from the results of over 1.6 million UK workplace drug tests over the last five years (2007-2011). In the past five years, there has been a 43 per cent increase in UK employees testing positive for

The Spanish Ministry of Development is considering nationalising the loss-making radial motorways in Madrid through state-owned company Seittsa. The plan would involve putting in place a toll-payment system to generate revenues to pay interests on debts and maintenance of the roads. The Ministry has already detected 600 locations where remote controlled payment systems could be installed in Madrid to charge those using the roads. The same plan includes a project to nationalise all motorways in Madrid at ris

The trailer telematics market is fast developing into a major growth engine for the commercial vehicles telematics market in Europe. Immense opportunities await telematics vendors as a majority of the trailer population in Europe (as well as North America) remains underpenetrated. Within the trailer telematics market, trailer location and tracking is the most developed application. However, security concerns and the need for effective mobile asset monitoring and management are creating several new applicati

The Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry of Japan is about to introduce a study panel to carry out in-depth discussions concerning a vehicle autopilot driving system. The system, which is aimed to be realised in the early 2020s, will apply to self-steering vehicles that feature their own navigation capability. The government intends to build special expressway lanes for such self-driving cars. After entering the designated lanes, the autonomous vehicle can take over the driving task entirely

VitaeMobility, specialists in e-mobility for business and government fleets and consumers, and ABB, a leading power and automation technology group, have announced a partnership to install and manage 50 Terra Smart Connect DC fast chargers at multiple locations throughout Belgium. ABB’s Terra Smart was specifically chosen because it is claimed to be the only smart connected charging station on the market that supports EV charging for company fleets in 30-120 minutes. The first installations for the nationwi

Switzerland-headquartered U-blox, a specialist in positioning and wireless semiconductors, has acquired UK-based Cognovo, a company specialising in software defined modem (SDM) chip development technology. The acquisition extends U-blox’ chip design capabilities to create differentiated products for strategic markets that require 4G communications combined with global positioning.

TomTom is enabling all of its 60 million portable navigation devices to receive free daily map changes via the TomTom map share community. Map share allows drivers to personalise the TomTom map on their own device and also share and receive map changes with the community around the world. This facility was previously only available on a limited number of TomTom devices.

IBM and the Davao City Government in the Philippines have announced an agreement to help the city scale-up its existing public safety and security command centre (PSSCC) by integrating city operations into a single system. To enable Davao’s smarter city transformation, IBM’s intelligent operations centre (IOC) will integrate multiple city agencies in the PSSCC to improve interdepartmental collaboration and enhance the management of Davao’s four pillars of public safety: crime prevention and suppression; eme

A colleague of mine, Mike Woof, the Editor of World Highways magazine, recently attended an open day event at a major ITS research establishment, the object of which was to showcase how the use of in-vehicle ITS technologies could improve fuel consumption and reduce emissions. Mike's expertise brings him into daily contact with the types of plant and equipment used to build roads and, as he related to me afterwards, he'd gone to the event filled with enthusiasm and came away somewhat disheartened.

Nashville's signal optimisation programme produced a stunning return on investment. Are those results exceptional? Could similar results be replicated in cities across the US and indeed the world? ITS International spoke to Chris Rhodes, P.E. of Kimley-Horn and Associates, project leader for the Nashville signal optimisation programme. "You have to bear in mind that with signal optimisation programmes you don't see, for instance, physical construction or new pieces of equipment on the roadside that someone

Engineers in the Ford Research and Innovation labs are developing ways to help the driver stay focused in busy situations by intelligently managing incoming communications. Data from the sensing systems of driver-assist technologies can be used to determine the amount of external demand and workload upon a driver at any given time including traffic and road conditions. In addition, Ford continues its health and wellness research with the development of a biometric seat, seat belt and steering wheel that can