New STA Technical Report reviews Smart City Needs and FIWARE-based Solutions

22 April 2019

The Smart Transportation Alliance (STA) has served as partner of the EC-funded frontierCities2 (fC2) Incubation & Acceleration Programme (2016-2018) which has supported 18 FIWARE-supported start-ups in the Smart City domain.

Within the Programme, a task to map the needs of the cities (City needs mapping) has been undertaken with the objective of highlighting mutual opportunities for cities and start-ups in terms of successful implementation of FIWARE–based solutions in the areas of:

• Transport and Mobility;

• Environment;

• People;

• Living;

• Governance;

• Economy.

The STA Technical Report 1/2019 reviews the methodology followed, based on a common online questionnaire submitted to both cities and start-ups.

SMARTI European Training Network publishes 2018 annual and training week reports

10 April 2019

SMARTI ETN (Sustainable Multifunctional Automated and Resilient Transport Infrastructures) is a EU-funded training-through-research programme that is training a new generation of multi-disciplinary professionals able to conceive the future of transport infrastructures. Launched in 2017, the aim of SMARTI ETN is growing this group of professionals through 15 individual research projects, allowing them to become specialists in that niche by providing them with cutting-edge training.

STA welcomes Joseph Marra as new member of the STA Management Committee

18 April 2019

Joseph Marra of GDTech (Belgium) has been appointed as new member of the STA Management Committee. Joseph Marra graduated as a Civil Engineer and holds a Master in Business Administration from the University of Liege, Belgium.

Joseph Marra’s career in the field of road safety spans since 2003 when he started working at the University of Liege’s Material Mechanics department. After two years, he joined ArcelorMittal’s Research Centre for Construction where he started as a calculation engineer of roadside safety equipment, to end as Program Leader of the Civil Engineering department in 2012. At that moment, he joined the company GDTech as a business development officer mainly focusing on developing the activity of simulation using LSDYNA in the crash & dynamic segment (including Roadside Safety Equipment).

He has been active at the European Road Federation since 2005 and at the Smart Transportation Alliance since 2017. He has served as one of the Belgian and French experts for the elaboration of CEN’s EN1317 and EN12767 within Technical Group 226. As a GDTech representative he also participates at TRB meetings related to NCHRP350 and MASH. GDTech is active in supporting accident reconstruction activities in various countries providing different services among which simulations using software such as PC-Crash. Finally, Joseph is representing the association EUDARTS in the French speaking zones (FRDARTS) concerning the use of data retrieved from boxes in cars that are involved in accidents.

NEWS OF INTEREST

First electric road in Sweden inaugurated

On June 22, the test stretch of the electric road will be inaugurated on the E16 in Sandviken. With that, Sweden will become one of the first countries in the world to conduct tests with electric power for heavy transports on public roads.

Electric roads will bring us one step closer to fossil fuel-free transports, and has the potential to achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions. This is one way of developing environmentally smart transports in the existing road network. It could be a good supplement to today's road and rail network, says Lena Erixon, Director General of Trafikverket.

Design & construction of more forgiving roadways will help save more lives & reduce injuries, ARTBA tells Congress

The American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) April 9 called for a fundamental shift in how the nation approaches road safety, emphasizing the need to design and build a transportation network that better compensates for error so that drivers, passengers, workers and other road users don’t pay for behavioral mistakes with their lives.

Rather than the usual federal focus on reducing the number of crashes by improving motorists’ behavior, ARTBA said a new paradigm is needed on two parallel tracks:

A focus on reducing incidents on America’s transportation system must be viewed as reducing severity of injuries as opposed to reducing the number of crashes.

The policy should anticipate user errors and emphasizes design, construction and maintenance of a system that will be “forgiving” of errant behavior.

New passive safety standard to be published

A new EN12767 (Passive Safety) Standard and National Annex is set to be published later this year, changing the way in which existing and new passive products are classified and how they will need to be specified.

UK Roads Ltd is holding a Passive Safety workshop on Tuesday 25 June to explain to managers, designers, safety engineers and specifiers the changes required.

Car crash fatalities linked to defective Lindsay X-Lite guardrails

Recently, multiple lawsuits have been filed against Lindsay Transportation Solutions for allegedly endangering people’s lives with defective highway guardrails. Their controversial X-Lite End Terminals have been associated with several deaths caused by the failure of the end terminal, or starting point, of the guardrail.

On impact, the X-Lite end terminal is designed to telescope, with one guardrail collapsing upon the other, and thereby absorbing energy and slowing the vehicle to a stop. Rather than performing as designed and marketed, the end terminals have not collapsed and instead have pierced the passenger compartment causing severe and fatal injuries.

Videos highlight the benefits of enhanced delineation

A collection of videos promoting the visible benefits of SolarLite Road Studs compared to their retro-reflective counterparts has been released to highlight their enhanced performance.

Clearview Intelligence has produced the short videos to demonstrate a comparable performance of its SolarLite Road Studs in four different limited visibility driving conditions.

Focusing on dusk, night-time, foggy and rainy conditions when the studs are most impactful, the videos show how the SolarLite alternative provides enhanced delineation resulting in visibility up to ten times further than traditional retro-reflective studs.

New easy-fit anti-terror guardrail passes industry test

The HVM Socketed Guardrail is a hostile vehicle mitigation pedestrian guardrail and has been successfully tested, having stood firm when it was deliberately rammed by a 2.5 tonne 4WD pick-up travelling at 30mph. The testing took place at MIRA last month and earned the guardrail its coveted IWA-14 rating.

The product is a new version of the company’s existing HVM guardrail and uses a ground-mounted socket system in combination with Securiscape’s SmartPost in order to limit the excavation depth required to fix it securely into place to just 400mm.