Editor's Blog - December 2019 Bonus Edition

Selling SCATS

The Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System, (SCATS) has achieved worldwide acclaim and has been sold in over 40 countries.  Wikipedia describes it as follows:

The Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System, abbreviated SCATS, is an intelligent transportation system that manages the dynamic (on-line, real-time) timing of signal phases at traffic signals, meaning that it tries to find the best phasing (i.e. cycle times, phase splits and offsets) for a traffic situation (for individual intersections as well as for the whole network). SCATS is based on the automatic plan selection from a library in response to the data derived from loop detectors or other road traffic sensors.

SCATS is installed at about 42,000 intersections in over 1800 cities in 40 countries.

Now the NSW government is planning to sell-off (or perhaps the right buzz word is “commercialising”) the system.  We will do a fuller article in the new year that will cover issues such as:

·       History – why was it so important, why have we forgotten much of the history?

·       Has it been receiving enough attention recently to operate optimally?

·       Has the de-skilling of government workforce made a sale inevitable and preferable?

·       Will new technology show the need for a whole new architecture?

·       Is there more financial benefit in collecting and selling data than maximising transport objectives?

Australia’s first regional AV project scoops national ITS award

Australia’s first regional automated vehicle initiative that incorporates a UK-based public transport technology company’s solar powered e-paper displays, was recently announced as the winner of an ITS Australia award. 

The Coffs Harbour Automated Vehicle Trial has won the ITS Australia 2019 National Award in the Automated Vehicle category. Known as BusBot, the project has been using Papercast’s solar-powered e-paper displays to provide accurate travel information to service users at their bus stops. The automated passenger vehicle trial is a New South Wales Government initiative, led in partnership between Transport for NSW, local bus operator Busways, the Coffs Harbour City Council, and French self-driving vehicle manufacturer EasyMile.  BusBot is the first Australian study of driverless buses in regional communities

Paris to Amazon: No Free Delivery for You

Mayor Anne Hidalgo wants the e-commerce company to pay for the carbon emissions and traffic congestion that online shopping generates in the French capital.

The mayor of Paris has proposed new laws and taxes that would control the number of deliveries made by online shopping giant Amazon, which have been judged “a source of congestion and pollution”.

In an open letter published by newspaper Le Monde, mayor Anne Hidalgo proposed a tax on the US commerce giant, and possible “limits” on deliveries in certain districts of the city.

Deliveries would only be possible at certain times, and would need to be reserved in advance, to avoid there being “more delivery trucks than available spaces”, the proposals said.

The Black Friday shopping event leads to “2.5 million deliveries [in Paris] per day, which is ten times’ the amount of daily parcels seen in the rest of the year”, and causes increased traffic and pollution, the letter said. 

The letter said that the “main polluter” should pay the costs, rather than “a national tax on each delivery, which has been thrown out several times by the government”.

The “law should allow local authorities to impose an ‘eco charge’ on home deliveries”, it continued.