Category Archives: Research

Vehicle Manufacturers Are Leading Intelligent Transportation Systems Efforts with Obstacle Detection Systems Launching in 2009, According to ABI Research

March 31, 2009 at 11:41 am

(Source: Fox Business)

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have been under development for more than a decade. While the promise of road-infrastructure based traffic management is still years away, some car manufacturers are moving ahead with autonomous radar-based obstacle detection systems increasing the safety of both drivers and pedestrians.

“Vehicle manufacturers are mainly interested in active safety as a new differentiator,” says ABI Research Practice Director Dominique Bonte. “However, avoiding accidents has a huge impact on traffic congestion levels, the reduction of which remains the primary goal of ITS.”

Toyota is planning to add a millimeter-wave radar system to some of its car models in Japan in 2009. The driver is warned about potential side and front collisions and when a crash is imminent automatic braking, seat belt retraction and air bag deployments are initiated. In the US a similar pre-collision system will be available on the 2010 Toyota Prius as an option. A similar feature was announced by Hyundai at CES. However, the current automotive slump will delay the adoption of active safety as a standard option across all brands.

To realize the benefits of integrated traffic management ITS requires vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. While many successful tests based on the Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC: undefined, undefined, undefined%) protocol are ongoing in Japan (ITS-Safety 2010 project), Europe (ERTICO, CAR 2 CAR Communication Consortium) and the US (DoT’s IntelliDriveSM project), full rollout is not expected before 2015.

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Tech savvy teenager takes Lexington transit into (un)chartered territory

March 30, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Danny Moraff (above), a 17-year-old member of Lexington's transit advisory board, has been a transportation buff for a long time. When he was in preschool, Moraff dressed as the D-Line for Halloween (below).

Danny Moraff dressed as the D-Line for Halloween.

(Source: Boston Globe via Bernie Wagenglast)

The town of Lexington’s transit service is fairly informal. The stops are pretty much wherever you happen to be standing when you see a bus.

But in one regard, the scrappy Lexpress and its six bus routes are ahead of the MBTA and its sophisticated network of boat, bus, light rail, heavy rail, commuter rail, bus rapid transit, and trackless trolley service.

Thanks to a local teenager, it was one of the smallest of pioneer transit agencies to integrate its route maps and schedules into Google Transit, a feature of Google Maps that reminds users seeking driving directions that they can also take buses and trains. Google Transit, launched in its current form in fall 2007, also helps users figure out how much time they’ll need for their trip and where and when to show up for a bus or subway so they don’t get left behind.

Danny Moraff, now 17, decided when he was 15 that he liked the idea of Google Transit – then in a developmental stage on the Web – and its ability to draw more people out of their cars. So he joined Lexington’s transit advisory board, convinced officials it was a worthwhile project, and volunteered to do all the legwork himself.

“I’m not a techie,” said Gail Wagner, transportation services coordinator for Lexpress, which has a $450,000 annual budget. “This is a shoestring operation.”

For Moraff, that meant spending all his free time riding six bus routes to plot the longitude, latitude, and typical arrival times on every block in the system. It meant logging every intersection in town and figuring out the computer coding that suited Google’s engineering needs. Moraff estimates it took him 60 to 100 hours over a period of 18 months, in between internships and schoolwork.

Click here toread the entire story. 

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Attention All Men: Study Says Women More Attracted To Men In Expensive Cars

March 27, 2009 at 1:14 pm

(Source: Jalopnik)

A UK university’s released a study proving what any car salesman’s ever told us, women judge men primarily by wealth and status, digging guys in expensive cars more than those driving an econobox.

The survey, run by researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, claims it shows women rate a man higher if he is behind the wheels of a “fancy motor rather than in an old banger.” The University team showed women pictures of the same man sitting in two cars — a $100,000 silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta.  The women, aged between 21 to 40, picked the man sitting in the Bentley ahead of the same man in the Ford.

 

The source article on Telegraph UK quotes the study’s author, Dr Dunn, that he believes this basic human trait will not change in the future – even as women become more independent and wealthy in their own rights.  He said: “It appears that the stereotype of women being positively influenced by a man’s status is true and, evolutionarily speaking, this makes sense.  “However, even with the growing number of women in high-paid careers and the fact that they can be highly successful has no effect on how attractive they are to men.  “What you find is that these new, wealthy women still show a preferment for high-status males.”

Now his researchers plan to carry out further studies – to guide men buying expensive cars in their mid-life crisis.  Dr Dunn, who admits to driving an old Ford Ka, will examine if high-status items like expensive cars can help make up for “the attractiveness-diminishing effects of age.”

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What Can Tata’s Nano Teach Detroit?

March 26, 2009 at 11:56 pm

 (Source: Business Week)

As the commercial model of India’s microcar is unveiled, U.S. carmakers would do well to learn from the innovations that brought it about

When Tata Motors (TTM) unveiled a prototype of its Nanomicrocar at the Delhi Auto Show in January 2008, auto executives around the world were aflutter. Quickly, they hustled teams to India to document the planned $2,000 “people’s car.” And industry watchers and innovation experts soon reported on the engineering and supply-chain breakthroughs behind the car.

Some 14 months later, Tata is set to show off the commercial version of the Nano, on Mar. 23. Today, the U.S. auto industry is struggling to survive, with General Motors (GM), once the world’s biggest carmaker, on the brink of bankruptcy. Look beyond the Nano halo and it’s clear that Tata Motors has problems of its own, from the $2.3 billion in debt it took on to purchase Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor (F) last year to the sums sunk into the Nano assembly plant in West Bengal that had to be abandoned. On top of that, there are the Nano competitors in development.

Still, no one disputes that the Nano is innovative on multiple levels—from its engineering to its marketing to its manufacturing. So it’s hard to avoid the question: What can a humbled Detroit learn from the Tata Nano?

A lot. The lessons start with the vision of Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors’ parent, Tata Group, to create an ultralow-cost car for a new category of Indian consumer: someone who couldn’t afford the $5,000 sticker price of what was then the cheapest car on the market and instead drove his family around on a $1,000 motorcycle. “Just in India there are 50 million to 100 million people caught in that automotive chasm,” says vice-president Vikas Sehgal, a principal at Booz & Co. And yet none of the automakers in India were focused on that segment. In that respect, the Nano is a great example of the so-called blue ocean strategy.

ROADS TO GREATNESS

“Great companies are built on creating new markets, not increasing market share in existing ones,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and chief innovation consultant at General Electric (GE), who quickly runs off 10 lessons for Detroit. Among them: U.S. automakers should focus less on incremental improvements to existing cars or adding a new model to the Cadillac line in order to compete against Lexus, and think more broadly about new market opportunities. Where, in other words, are Detroit’s blue oceans?

Click here to read the entire article.

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Streetsblog Interviews John Norquist @ Congress for the New Urbanism – How to Fix National Transportation Policy: Part I

March 26, 2009 at 4:59 pm

(Source: Streetsblog)

How can federal policy encourage walkable street networks instead of highways and sprawl? 

connected_network.jpg

The news coming out of Washington last week jacked up expectations for national transportation policy to new heights. Cabinet members Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan announced a partnership to connect transportation and housing policy, branded as the “Sustainable Communities Initiative.” The second-in-command at DOT, Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, told a New York audience that “building communities” is a top priority at his agency.At the moment, however, the scene on the ground shows how far we have to go before the reality catches up to the rhetoric: State DOTs flush with federal stimulus cash are plowing ahead with wasteful, sprawl-inducing highway projects. Ultimately, you can’t end car dependence or create livable places without enlisting the people building those roads — the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), state DOTs, and other entities that shape local policy. How can the feds affect their decisions?

john_norquist.jpgThe Congress for the New Urbanism has some intriguing answers. During the stimulus debate, CNU proposed a new type of federal road funding that would help to build connected grids — the kind of streets that livable communities are made of. The proposal didn’t make it into the stimulus package before the bill got rushed out the door, but the upcoming federal transportation bill will provide another chance. CNU President John Norquist — a four-term mayor of Milwaukee who first got into politics as an anti-freeway advocate — was down in DC last Thursday to share his ideas with Congress. Streetsblog spoke to him afterward about what’s broken with national transportation policy and how to fix it. Here’s the first part of our interview.

Ben Fried: During the stimulus debate you sent a letter to James Oberstar, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and among other things you said that discussion of national transportation policy often presents a “false dichotomy” between transit funding and road funding. What did you mean? 

John Norquist: Well, maybe “false” is the wrong word for me to have used, but it’s a dichotomy that’s very limited. If the debate is about transit versus roads — and currently the battle lines are drawn at 20 percent funding for transit, 80 percent for roads — it’s a really limited debate. It leaves out the whole discussion of what kind of roads to build. So if you have a city with boulevards and avenues and no freeways, it’s going to be a lot more valuable. You look at Vancouver, they have no freeways whatsoever, and they have a fabulously intense and valuable real estate and job market. And then you look at the places that have invested all the money in the giant road segments and they tend to be degraded. It’s not roads versus transit — it’s good street networks-plus-transit versus mindless building of out-of-scale roads. I mean they’re basically putting rural roads into urbanized areas and it’s counterproductive, it reduces the value of the economy, it destroys jobs, destroys real estate value. For what, so you can drive fast at two in the morning when you’re drunk?
Click here to read the entire interview.
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MIT’s mobile application demonstrates the size of your Carbon footprint by your transportation mode choice & much more

March 25, 2009 at 5:54 pm

The school’s Mobile Experience Lab explores the future of life with the mobile handset

(Source: ContactlessNews via Bernie Wagenblast’  TCN)

Most trials of Near Field Communication (NFC) have involved payment applications at the neighborhood department store, restaurant or transit agency. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge took a different tact, however, attempting to illustrate the many other ways NFC could be used in everyday life.

The result was a video featuring several students and how they utilized NFC-compliant cell phones. Right now, it’s more a vision on how NFC can influence the lives of citizens, says Federico Casalegno, director of MIT’s Mobile Experience Lab and one of the movers behind this NFC project.

The lab was created to close the breach between the university and industry. “Our group was to imagine new products and services for mobile phones three years out,” he says. “We wanted to know how users could take advantage of this new technology. We have a technology that is pretty secure and what we’re looking into is how we can use it to improve human experiences.”   Everything in the video is feasible now, albeit in many instances in just a prototype format. “But paying for transit or exchanging data through your phones or making payments, even networking and gaming are all available now,” says Casalegno.

One possible idea is to explore “how users can ride together and maybe collect eco points or monitor their eco footprint or their environmental impact,” says Casalegno. “You can monitor how many times you use public transit, or a private car versus a shared car or bicycle program. You could even have a friendly competition among users about who is collecting more eco-points.”
Potential NFC applications in the Transportation sector (pared down from a lengthy list):
  • Get your bike from the rack tapping the phone on the service pole. Monitor your movements inside the city or check the bike’s availability near you.
  • Car Pooling: Publish your proposals for car pooling, search for people who are also going where you need to go.
  • Smart objects: In addition to having your phone dial the number of the person in a picture, you could also send a text message to that person. The same system can work for bulletin boards, providing a shortcut for announcement details or contact information.
  • Carbon footprint monitoring: Track your footprint by your choice in transportation. Other potentials explored by MIT include using it with Zip Car, a car sharing service, allowing you to check availability, then rent and pay for the car.
Click here to reead the entire article.
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Green:Net 2009 conference panel outlines the major obstacles for an Eletric Vehicle future

March 25, 2009 at 4:08 pm

(Source:  Tree Hugger) 

A panel of the big names in electric car infrastructure held a panel at Green:Net. Better Place, Google, Coulomb Technologies, and GridPoint were all present. One issue discussed was the challenges facing electric vehicles. Check out the video below to hear the biggest challenges standing in the way of us and our EVs.

 Click here to read the entire article.

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The bickering starts over the implementation of the Cash for Clunkers legislation

March 24, 2009 at 7:05 pm

(Source: Autoblog)

Aftermarket group warns Cash For Clunkers legislation will expand landfills


The House is currently looking at a Cash for Clunkers bill that would give owners of eight-year or older vehicles up to $5,000 to turn in their car or truck for a more fuel efficient vehicle. The deal sounds great for the owners of beaters, and automakers wouldn’t complain much either. The most politically friendly aspect of the legislation, though, is the perceived positive impact on the environment. More fuel efficient vehicles emit less CO2 than an older model, and less oil use means less drilling. Less drilling means a decreased dependency on foreign oil. That sounds like a win, win, win, win proposition, but one organization isn’t so sure.

The Fight Cash For Clunkers group claims that the legislation would do more harm to the environment than good. Aaron Lowe, vice president of government affairs for the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, says Cash For Clunkers will lead to more vehicles being scrapped, which would then lead to more car waste in landfills. The group would rather owners of older vehicles take steps to improve the efficiency of the vehicles they already own. 

Click here to read the entire article and don’t forget to register your comments below on tihs very important issue.  Take action!
Note: Transportgooru wonders how other Governments such as Germany are able to successfully implement similar programs ( while battling this environmental/recycling challenge ).  Instead of fighting the Government, can Fight Cash for Clunkers work with the Government and find meaningful ways to approach this issue.  Failure to understand and implement this program soon, may soon lead to behemoth challenges, both economically and environmentally.  Here are some related  articles from the Transportgooru.com archives:
(1) Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act revives “Cash for Clunkers” scrapping plan in U.S.
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Turning on to Nano-man — BBC Earth Watch explores the impact of TATA’s Nano from a environmental perspective

March 24, 2009 at 1:58 pm

(Source: BBC Earth Watch)

So far, just about everyone seems to love the self-styled “world’s cheapest car”, the Tata Nano.

Writing on these pages, Indian motoring journalist Hormazd Sorabjee writes that “It thrilled me with its ‘proper car’ feel”; while for Adil Jal Darukhanawala of zigwheels.com, “The Nano has the makings of a mega winner.”

And what’s not to love? A five-seater car that does about 20 km per litre (that’s 56 MPG in old money) and costs $2,000 – come on! – and it’s not the end of the line, with Bajaj, the company that principally populates South and Southeast Asia’s roads with auto-rickshaws, planning to launch its own tiny car (the Pico?) within two years.

Nano launchJust about the only people sounding a cautionary note on the tiny Nano’s giant appeal are environmental groups, notably the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

They judge it inappropriate for Indian cities, choked by traffic, where jams mean a journey across town can already be measured in hours.

“Cars may drive growth and aspirations, but they can never meet the commuting needs of urban India. Cars choke cities, harm public health and guzzle more oil.”

CSE’s simple prescription is more investment in mass transit schemes.

Although one can see the logic of their argument, it’s hard to imagine it prevailing.

Many Indian cities already have swarming bus networks and suburban rail networks. They’re slowly being supplemented by true mass transit rail systems – up and running inCalcutta and Delhi, under construction in Mumbai and Bangalore.

Click here to read the entire report.
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Transit Etiquette vs. NYC Etiquette – Pregnant and Standing on the Subway

March 23, 2009 at 7:02 pm

(Source:  Wall Street Journal Blog  – The Juggle)

I just had the fourth day in a row where I stood much of the way on my 40-minute subway ride. I’m 6.5 months pregnant–and it’s obvious–and not a single person offered me a seat. What’s more, sometimes I have had people literally push past me (I’m not as speedy as I used to be) to get the last seat on the train.

It’s not just me. Recently, a woman with a cast from foot-to-knee got on about 15 minutes into my ride. Nobody offered the casted woman a seat. So I did–it was a rare day that I’d snagged an empty seat. She refused because I am pregnant. I took the opportunity to shame my fellow passengers by saying, “It’s pretty bad when the pregnant lady is the only one offering someone with a cast a seat.” Nobody budged.

As a courtesy, I have always offered a seat to pregnant women, older people and anyone who was disabled, on crutches, or the like. It just seems like the human thing to do. (On some Japanese trains, a uniformed “manners squad” patrols cars to make sure that the elderly, disabled and pregnant have seats.)

Click here to read the entire blog. (Subscription Reqd.  Free Registration available). Also, if you have an extra minute, answer a quick poll @ Sodahead on this issue.

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