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A team of IBM experts assigned to Nairobi have provided a framework and roadmap to the city to improve the flow of road traffic and increase revenues from the transportation sector. The recommendations complement Nairobi's considerable on-going investment in underlying roadway infrastructure and include making traffic information more readily available to citizens, motorists, police, policymakers and planners so that better transportation decisions can be made in the near and long term.

High road toll increases threaten new regulation, but states should be free to use toll revenue for Interstate improvements. Bob Poole reports Large toll rate increases have been implemented recently by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, justified in part to help pay for its World Trade Center project. In response, a bill was introduced in Congress that would allow the Secretary of Transportation to regulate tolls on every bridge on the country’s Interstates and other federally aided highways. F

Andrew Bardin Williams investigates tolling on the federal Interstate system as maintenance and upgrade requirements increasingly outpace funding The I-95 corridor through North Carolina is one of the most heavy trafficked interstates in the US, seeing upwards of 46,000 vehicles per day in some stretches-and North Carolina’s Department of Transportation (NCDOT) estimates this number will to rise to 98,000 vehicles per day by 2040. Along with the rest of the federal interstate system, the North Carolina str

Altran, a global specialist in high-tech engineering consulting, has inaugurated at its head office in Barcelona the Altran Excellence Centre for new automotive technologies that will, within the next five next years, recruit 400 consultants who will join the 2,000 automotive specialists operating in 20 countries around the world. The aim of the global excellence centre will be to concentrate on the group's projects related to innovation and electric vehicle development, offering expertise about electric ve

Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) has launched a free mobile phone app it created for download on the iPhone and Android that it claims is the first of its kind in the US, allowing FasTrak account holders access to the same account and customer service features they find on The Toll Roads’ website.

The Mineta Transportation Institute in the US has released its newest research report, Decision Support Framework for Using Value Capture to Fund Public Transit: Lessons from Project-Specific Analysis. The research investigates the viability of land "value capture" (VC) to help generate revenue for transit provision. Five VC mechanisms are evaluated in depth, including tax increment financing (TIF), special assessment districts (SADs), transit impact fees, joint developments, and air rights. The report incl

Russia’s transport systems are developing on a grand scale with ITS central to the plans, thanks in no small part to a recently relaunched ITS Russia. Jon Masters interviews the organisation’s chief executive officer Vladimir Kryuchkov Over coming years many of the biggest deployments of new technology for transport are likely to be seen in Russia. For a political and economic superpower, the world’s biggest country has only recently started to harness ITS for the good of its transport networks. But the sca

In view of Germany's ambitious electromobility target - one million electric cars in use in 2020, compared to 4,500 e-cars nationwide at present - the automobile industry plans to offer more than 15 new electric vehicle models in the coming two years, according to the National Platform E-Mobility's (NPE Nationale Plattform Elektromobilität's) third report. First application fields for electrified cars could be car sharing models and public authority vehicle fleets.

At a recent meeting in Copenhagen, hosted by the city and ITS Denmark, the Network of National ITS Associations, a grouping of national ITS interests that currently consists of 26 member organisations, re-elected the sitting chairman, vice chair, and one of the coordinating committee officers. The Ertico – ITS Europe-hosted network now includes on its coordination committee, Jennie Martin, ITS UK as chairman; Norbert Handke, ITS Network Germany – vice chairman and project champion; Christer Karlsson, ITS Sw

Beat the Traffic has been selected as a finalist for Red Herring's Top 100 Americas award, a prestigious list honouring the year's most promising private technology ventures from the North American business region. Finalists for the 2012 edition of the Red Herring 100 Americas award are selected based upon their technological innovation, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition, and financial health. During the several months leading up to the announcement, hundreds of compani

Cubic Transportation Systems and the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) have entered into a collaborative partnership to research the next generation of intelligent travel technologies for cities. Cubic will contribute US$500,000 over five years to the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering to fund research done by faculty, students and Cubic Transportation Systems staff. The project aims to achieve a better understanding of the application and use of em

Signal Service, a distributor of traffic control and ITS equipment since 1991, has announced a partnership to distribute McCain’s ITS, traffic control equipment, and parking guidance solutions throughout Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Norphonic emergency roadside telephones (ERT) have been selected for the Hardanger Bridge, one of the world’s longest suspension bridges, crossing the picturesque Hardangerfjord in southwestern Norway. The Hardanger Bridge will be among of the longest suspension bridges in the world, even longer than the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, with a total suspension-span of 1310 meters and will significantly improve the connection between Norway’s two largest cities (Oslo and Bergen).

HopStop, a popular pedestrian navigation and transit routing service covering cities in the US, Canada, Europe and Russia, has been selected by TeleCommunication Systems, a specialist in mobile communication technology to provide public transportation directions for TCS’ navigation services. The HopStop service will extends TCS’ navigation and search functionalities, giving its customers and business partners a location-based ecosystem that connects existing applications and services without the need to cus

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) has released findings from the first phase of a three-part research effort aimed at mitigating costly large truck rollovers. ATRI has produced a database of locations with the highest frequency of large truck rollovers using over 50,000 crash records over a nine-year period. The database, which covers 31 states, provides valuable insight into the location of high frequency rollover locations to both public transportation officials and the trucking indust

As part of the European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) 2012, the European Space Agency (ESA) is offering an Innovation Prize for the best business idea based on the use of satellite navigation systems. The agency is looking for ideas for applications that exhibit significant market potential and can be implemented shortly. The winner will receive €10,000 (US$12,940) and the chance to realise their idea at a European business incubation centre. Anyone with an innovative business idea for using sate

A new report examines how aggressive government belt-tightening and financial market deleveraging restrained worldwide infrastructure investments for 2012 and probably for the next five years. In the US, for instance, Infrastructure2012: Spotlight on Leadership, released by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and Ernst & Young, says that constrained public budgets and a growing recognition at the local level of the importance of infrastructure, combined with lack of action at the federal level, are causing state

AeroVironment has announced the Port of Seattle has awarded the company a contract valued up to US$8.8 million through 2014 to supply its PosiCharge electric Ground Support Equipment (eGSE) fast charge systems to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. “This project will be a tremendous step toward our Century Agenda goal to reduce carbon emissions by 50 per cent from 2005 levels,” said Elizabeth Leavitt, planning and environmental programs director at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

A study by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) shows cycling, rather than travelling by car or bus, as the fastest way of travelling in Buenos Aires city. By bike, it takes 26 minutes to travel between Parque Centenario and Plaza de Mayo, compared to 40 minutes that takes by bus and 41 minutes by car. The journeys were at the same time (8:50AM). The average speed for a bike is 16.2km/h, compared to 10.5km/h for a bus and 10.3km/h for a car. Because of parking, car travel is the mo

Singapore’s MRT system is being upgraded to become more reliable, said Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew during the ground-breaking for the East-West MRT line's Tuas West Extension. According to Lui, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will cover the cost of infrastructure works and the systems which will cost some US$719 million. The upgrade work will include the establishment of a more robust system by train operator SMRT.