Australia faces tough choices over toll tags

ITS Australia

With more than seven million tolling tags nearing the end of their life, delegates to 858 ITS Australia’s 2014 National Electronic Tolling Conference had more than a passing interest debating possible ways forward.


Rex Wright, chair of the Australian Toll Road Users’ Group, said the industry was potentially facing an AUD$100million bill over the next five years but the toll operators are committed to a unified national approach, consistent with the current interoperability. One potential solution put forward by 108 Q-Free was video recognition (see page 30) while Eroad highlighted the benefits of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) -based road charging.

Delegates from Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Thailand and USA attended the two-day conference in Sydney which covered patronage analysis and behaviour, emerging technologies, enforcement and compliance.

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 Smart Ticketing

New Alliance for smart ticketing

The Smart Ticketing Alliance (STA) is a new association set up to lead the drafting of a single specification for smart ticketing across Europe.

Originally set up by the national smart ticketing organisations of UK (ITSO), Germany and France plus the Calypso Network Association and International Association of Public Transport (UITP) it has now established a legal footing for its operation. John Verity of ITSO has been elected as the STA’s first chairperson and the UITP will host the alliance in Brussels and act as its secretariat.

Smartcard operators from 10 countries were represented at the official launch of the Alliance which aims to introduce Europe-wide standards and cross border acceptance for ticketing using NFC phones to facilitate the implementation and deployment of NFC-enabled devices. The Alliance has received endorsement from EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas and is setting up working groups looking at the contactless interface, NFC, certification and media security.

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ITS United Kingdom

Understanding emerging transport technologies

288 ITS UK and 6674 the Institution of Engineering and Technology are to co-host Road Transport Information and Control 2014 in London on 6-7 October.

Delegates will hear the European perspective on Autonomous Vehicles from Dr Maxime Flament, head of Ertico’s SafeMobility sector. There will also be a special session to launch the Local Authority Guide to Emerging Transport Technology handbook which has been produced jointly by the two associations. The handbook aims to promote strategic thinking, help authorities deliver their local transport objectives more cheaply through the use of emerging technology while avoiding investment in technology that will be rapidly overtaken.

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ITS Arab

Index compares competencies

6774 ITS-Arab’s Transport Policy Working Group has developed the ITS-Index, a method of evaluating and comparing ITS competencies across regions. It is a comparative index aimed at accelerating standardisation and encouraging ITS deployment to improve transport management efficiency, safety and security. ITS-Arab says the research paper has been well received in many parts of the world and it has been invited to participate in a similar project to be launched by European ITS transport policy experts and the European Commission.  Copies of the paper are available via the ITS-Arab website.

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ITS South Africa

Broadband rollout

As broadband infrastructure is being rapidly deployed across the country, Dr Paul Vorster from 6992 ITS South Africa (ITSSA) has issued something of a wake-up call. “This trend will challenge the ITS industry to make sure that smart transport solutions are ‘software ready’ as our urban areas migrate towards Smart Cities,” he said.  “Cities around the world share the challenge of growing pressures on ageing infrastructures with often declining financial resources. In this ‘sink-or-swim’ environment, the concept of Smart Cities and the use of Big Data is the strategic direction for winning cities.” ITSSA is to host a Smart Cities/Smart Transport workshop in October.

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Ertico

Detroit  workshop

Prior to the 6456 ITS World Congress opening ceremony in Detroit on 7 September, 374 Ertico and the USDOT are running an international workshop on sharing data from field operational trials (FOTs). It will be held at the ITS Congress venue and is free to attend but those interested in attending should register their interest at <%$Linker:2External<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary />000oLinkExternalwww.fot-net.euVisit www.fot-net.eu Websitefalsehttp://www.fot-net.eu/falsefalse%>. Later in the month (18 September) Ertico it is running a Connected Vehicles conference in Brussels. This will contemplate the future of smart mobility along with the opportunities and risks in developing products and services to build up a connected vehicles ecosystem and intelligent road network.