List view / Grid view

Issue 5 2007

 

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Public transport – a real alternative

6 October 2007 | By Anu Vehviläinen, Minister of Transport, Finland

A public transport system has to function around a country’s special features. Finland is a big country with a dispersed population, so a private car is often an essential means of transport outside urban areas. However, Finland does not differ much from other EU countries in that our public transport…

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Focusing on Oslo’s transport network

6 October 2007 | By Peter N. Myhre, Commissioner for Environmental Affairs and Transport

Oslo is the capital of Norway and its largest city, with 530,000 inhabitants. With the surrounding county of Akershus, there are more than one million inhabitants. The growth in population in recent years has been large (8.1 per cent from 2000 to 2006) and higher than expected (4.4 per cent).…

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TETRA – Taking care of transport

6 October 2007 | By Phil Kidner, CEO TETRA Association

Across Europe and around the world, public private and commercial transport systems are managed, connected and protected by TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), the digital trunked mobile radio standard. The TETRA standard was developed by ETSI to meet the needs of traditional Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) user organisations, and utilises a…

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Bus ticket enters the digital age in Western Europe

6 October 2007 | By Tom Van der Vreken, Spokesperson, De Lijn

If you asked users of public transport what they consider to be the most important aspect of the service, how would they answer? The Flemish public transport company De Lijn put the question to 4,000 passengers. One of the top responses, not surprisingly, was punctuality. So, to further improve punctuality,…

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Improving road tunnel safety

6 October 2007 | By Dr Fathi Tarada, Director of Fire Safety Engineering, Halcrow Group Ltd

Tunnels are no more dangerous than the rest of the road network; in fact, they are generally safer. However, in case of an incident in a tunnel, the possible consequences in terms of life safety, damage to infrastructure assets and disruption to traffic flow are significantly magnified. A recent example…

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Technological trends in road user charging and congestion charging systems

6 October 2007 | By Steinar Furan, Quality Manager, Q-Free ASA

Technological developments have unleashed a multitude of tools for the owners of road user charging and congestion charging systems. It could be thought that this vast selection of tools would make system design and operation very easy, and that assumption is correct if the focus remains on the system, rather…

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A look at CCTV in Dublin

6 October 2007 | By Brendan O’Brien, Head of Technical Services (Traffic), Dublin City Council

Dublin City Council is a major user of CCTV systems. It is primarily used for traffic monitoring and management within the city area, along regional and motorway links, dedicated public transport links, and the approaches to the Dublin Port Tunnel. The City Council monitors over 160 CCTV cameras from a…

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The Rotterdam Electric Tram (RET) and measures for socially safe public transport

6 October 2007 | By Beatrix Lourens, Head of Security at RET, and Krishna Baboelal, Area Manager

The RET never intended to play a role in the war on terrorism, but it did want to take preventive measures to ensure an adequate response in the event of a possible terrorist attack. In addition to its sound social safety policy, the RET also has an efficient organisation to…

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The tramway network of Barcelona: Trambaix and Trambesòs

6 October 2007 | By Francisco Javier Vizcaíno, Managing Director, Tramvia Metropolità, SA

Barcelona had a tramway system for almost a century; from 1872 until 1971. The first tramway line connected the city with the municipality of Gràcia, and was pulled by horses. Fifty years later, using electricity, Barcelona’s tramway system had one of the biggest networks in Europe. However, this method of…

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New IT challenges in public transportation

6 October 2007 | By Anders Kåbjörn, InformNorden Secretary General

The breakthrough of the Internet and the mobile phone in the middle of the 90s made it possible to develop different advanced information services in public transportation...

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Mercedes-Benz Citaro hybrid: a step towards the zero emission vehicle

6 October 2007 | By Paul Wolfe, Commissioning Editor

Ten years after the Mercedes-Benz Citaro urban regular service bus was unveiled at the UITP Congress 1997 in Stuttgart, Citaro number 17,500 was recently presented at the UITP Congress 2007 in Helsinki. The Citaro has been frequently updated over the previous years and the ultra-modern Citaro of today continues to…

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The impact of Safety Integrity Level (SIL) requirements on the Phileas vehicle

6 October 2007 | By Alain Cherbuis, Marketing Executive, SMTD

Phileas is a new concept for comfortable, high frequent passenger transport. Run on a dedicated bus lane, the Phileas combines the advantages of rail transport with the low costs and flexibility of a bus system. With precision docking along a raised platform, fast passenger entry and exit will reduce the…