Highway & Network Management

Siemens has been asked by Leeds City Council to provide a new city-wide IP-Communications network. The network will initially be used for a new Urban Traffic Management Control (UTMC) system and may later support CCTV as well as the extension of UTMC to more than 1,000 sites. The UTMC system in Leeds controls around 400 signals in Leeds and Calderdale and is said to be key to keeping traffic moving through the large West Yorkshire city. Reliable communications are crucial, but to date this is said to have c

New initiatives could boost transport sustainability – David Crawford writes. New roles are opening up for urban traffic management systems in helping city authorities to meet increasingly stringent governmental and supra-governmental air quality standards. European local authorities are typically tasked with both traffic management and pollution monitoring within their areas, making them well placed to draw on the latter to mitigate the impacts of the former.

New rules in the US mean that electric vehicles will require noise generation equipment. This covers electric vehicles and hybrids as well as motorcycles, medium and heavy trucks and buses. It specifies that the alert sound must be sufficient to allow a pedestrian to detect a nearby EV or PHEV operating at constant speed, accelerating, decelerating and operating in any other critical scenarios. It must reflect the minimum sound level emitted by a motor vehicle that is necessary to allow visually-impaired an

The project to install Variable Message Signs (VMS), recently approved by Staffordshire County Council, will provide motorists with important travel and road safety information, and up-to-date warnings of incidents and accidents to help them avoid trouble spots and possible congestion. Michael Smith, the county council’s senior highways project engineer, said: “‘In addition to representing good value for money, the company has a sound track record in this area having already successfully supplied and instal

Transport and traffic analysis nowadays tends to switch between static analysis modelling for large scale studies and microsimulation for finer grain work, with perhaps the mesoscopic model also finding a place for mid-level. Most producers make software tools at all three levels and increasingly package them together. Spanish firm TSS (Transport Simulation Systems) has gone one better with its latest release Aimsum 7, by giving it the capacity to "zoom in" from a larger scale mesoscopic model to a smaller

Vietnam intends to set up an electronic network that will charge vehicle drivers to enter the centre of Ho Chi Minh City. Congestion is a major problem in the city and the authorities wish to help tackle the issue and allow better traffic flow. The electronic congestion charging system will be installed on roads at Districts 10, 3 and 1 and Ho Chi Minh City will the first in Vietnam to adopt such an approach.