Traffic

China is home to more people than any other country on Earth, and they're moving into megacities at a rate that's simply unprecedented. Managing a transport plan for such a colossal number of people presents a traffic congestion and pollution quandary the likes of which we've simply never seen before. The Straddling Bus is an amazing public transport solution that drives over the top of the cars on a slightly modified road, able to stop without interrupting the traffic flow and to glide over the top of congestion. This go-go-gadget bus is far quicker and 90 percent cheaper to build than a new subway route, it's solar/grid electric powered and it's no pipe dream – construction starts at the end of this year.  Read More

If there are three claims that people in almost every part of the world make about where they live, those claims are: our weather is notoriously unpredictable, we are being taxed into the Stone Age, and... the traffic here is worse than almost anywhere else. Well, as part of its research and development of traffic management systems, IBM decided to find out just which places do have the worst traffic - or at least, which places have the residents who are most negatively affected by it. The results: if you don’t like traffic, don’t live in a fast-growing metropolis.  Read More

Luckily there aren’t many countries that drive on the opposite side of the road and share borders. However, they do exist, such as China, which drives on the right, and the former British colony of Hong Kong, and former Portuguese colony of Macau, both which drive on the left. This can pose an interesting problem for engineers and road planners, but Dutch architectural firm, NL Architects, has come up with a bridge with a twist – a concept that not only puts the drivers on the correct side of the road physically, but helps reinforce that fact visually to help get the drivers into the mindset of driving on the opposite side of the road.  Read More

Although much of the focus of pollution from automobiles centers on carbon emissions, there are other airborne nasties spewing from the tailpipes of fossil fuel-powered vehicles. These include nitrogen oxides (NOx). In the form of nitrogen dioxide it reacts with chemicals produced by sunlight to form nitric acid – a major constituent of acid rain – and also reacts with sunlight, leading to the formation of ozone and smog. Everyone is exposed to small amounts of nitrogen oxides in ambient air, but exposure to higher amounts, in areas of heavy traffic for example, can damage respiratory airways. Testing has shown that surfacing roads with air purifying concrete could make a big contribution to local air purity by reducing the concentration of nitrogen oxides by 25 to 45 percent.  Read More

Traffic lights are an essential part of keeping chaos at bay on our city streets, but the idea didn't exactly get off to a flying start. The first gas-lit traffic light appeared outside the British Houses of Parliament in London in December 1868 but exploded two months later (which was bad news for the policeman operating it) and when the first electric lights appeared in the U.S. in 1912, apparently no-one wanted to stop for a “flashing bird house.” Gradually the technology improved and interconnected lights that could be automatically rather than manually controlled appeared in the 1920s. Now we could be seeing another great leap forward - traffic lights that talk to cars. That's the basis of Audi's travolution project which sets up a dialogue between vehicles and traffic lights in order to keep traffic flowing, save fuel, reduce emissions and possibly help keep drivers saner in the process.  Read More

Is there anything more monotonous than being stuck in a long line of traffic when you still have miles to go before your reach your destination? Wouldn’t it be great if you could relax and let somebody else do all the hard work? Well if all goes well with a European research project, that possibility might just become a reality. The Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) project will look at linking a series of vehicles in a road train, controlled by a lead vehicle, with communication occurring via wireless sensors.  Read More

Every platform needs a killer app and for the Android OS the early contender for that title has to be the just announced Google Maps Navigation for mobile. Only available for Android 2.0 phones, the new application takes the current Google Maps for mobile and gives it a hefty shot of steroids. Most of the new features that set the app apart from most in-car turn-by-turn navigation systems come courtesy of its Internet connectivity, which makes it possible to access a wealth of relevant information residing on Google’s servers while out and about.  Read More

Taiwan's Dosun Solar Technology has added a flashing LED bike pedal to its range of safety lighting gadgets. As well as sporting the familiar orange reflective plastic strips on the front and back, each outer corner of the J-1 Pedal Light holds four bright LEDs which start to flash when the rider begins to pedal.  Read More

Apparently, the ongoing testing of the MotionPower system for generating electricity from the movement of cars and light trucks - as reported here previously - is paying dividends. New Energy, the company developing the technology, reports it can produce a 25-fold increase in the system’s capacity to capture kinetic energy from moving vehicles, bringing the commercialization of the MotionPower system another step closer to reality.  Read More