The Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) uses the industrial internet of things and artificial intelligence to develop new predictive rail maintenance and performance management technologies. Passenger rail services in Japan have become a byword for efficiency, and the network spanning more than 27,000km remains one of the most utilised, punctual and least subsidised in the world. Ensuring that operations and maintenance (O&M) work is carried out in a timely fashion is central to this success. ...

The vision of the technology-powered metropolis of the future is being sold with images that bear little resemblance to the real world. Suddenly, the world is awash in smart cities. Google is about to build one in Toronto. Hudson Yards in New York City is one, kind of. China and India have both declared national missions to construct or retrofit dozens of smart city projects all at once. And global tech giants and startups are racing to offer customers urban dashboards, “smart’’ systems, ...

• Piccadilly Circus Tube’s Sign Language staff (HydeParkNow) • TfL’s hidden dungeons (Paszkiewicz) • Commuter sells seat on crowded Tokyo train (Guardian) • Self-driving robotic boats for Amsterdam’s canals (CBCSpark) • Improving bus time accuracy with machine learning (MontrealGazette) • Baltimore’s much-maligned Metro (CityLab) • Uber driver party causes complete traffic chaos (StreetsBlog) • Arizonans attack autonomous vehicles (PriceTags) How Uber operates in ...

Huawei and China Mobile recently launched 5G at Shanghai’s Hongqiao Railway Station, which will allow passengers to download a 2GB high-definition film in less than 20 seconds. However, the move has raised concerns about how this new network may play into the growing trend of rail and metro cyber-attacks. Fifth generation mobile telecoms technology, known as 5G, is expected to be a step-change in mobile networking for both consumers and industry, offering users faster download speeds, lower ...

• Old Street roundabout transformed to improve safety (Transport-Britain) • The urine deflectors of Fleet Street (AtlasObscura) • Homemade app shows shocking scale of Northern Rail delays (Wired) • Seattle found the solution to driving alone to work (Politico) • Does light rail reduce traffic? The LA Expo Line (Transfers) • Cities bringing big data to accessibility esp sidewalks (SmartCitiesDive) • Parking is real estate in hiding (Micromobility) • Melbourne using temporary tram ...

In the autumn of 2016, Transport for London (TfL) started tracking its passengers. A month long trial at 54 stations used Wi-Fi signals from phones and other devices to harvest depersonalised data about where, when and how people were using the tube. TfL has now decided to rollout the scheme across the whole Underground network. Starting on July 8 2019, every device will be tracked as people complete their journeys. The data harvested could lead directly to improvements in how the tube runs and ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. This week’s lineup: • Atmospheric Underground photos (TubeMapper) • Glasgow considering congestion charging (AirQualityNews) • Paris Mayor floats free transit for all (NextCity) • Data shows how often cars block bus & bike lanes (FastCompany) • How a few US cities are growing transit ridership (StreetsBlog) • Ghost of old L branch haunts Obama Library (Chicago Tribune) • US Parking Madness tournament (StreetsBlog) • Amazon ...

More and more people travel by train in Germany. How can we combine machine learning and visual analytics methods to help manage the passenger loads? Peak Spotting provides yield and capacity managers with rich visual tools to identify potential bottlenecks early on and react through price management, communications or logistic solutions. Based on passenger load predictions from neural nets and random forest models, the web application integrates millions of datapoints over 100 days into the ...

An agreement to co-operate to develop ‘smart’ sleepers containing real-time data collection sensors has been signed by Italian start-up company Greenrail and Spanish technology provider Indra. The companies are to work together to study the technical and economic viability of the concept, which would integrate Indra’s technology with Greenrail’s sleepers. These combine a prestressed concrete core with an external casing made from recycled rubber and plastic. Continue reading…

Discussed at length in specialist magazines… and increasingly in the popular press, it is transport’s latest buzzphrase. And with promises of a seamless choice of mobility across all modes of transport, in just one place, it is a very tempting offer. But one nagging question keeps coming up when people keep talking about it. How on Earth will anyone make any money out of it? This is for one very simple fact: it is very difficult to make any money out of transport. In a time when it is ...

Many major cities around the world are seeing rapid population growth, resulting in increased strain on existing road and public transportation network infrastructure as the numbers on the daily commute swell. Smart mobility – putting data, information, and options in the hands of the travelling public – has been beneficial to many of these cities, allowing better use of fixed resources and more efficient movement around the urban space. Opening up live and static datasets for public ...

Smartphone technology is being used on the Melbourne rail network in a way not yet seen anywhere else in the world to measure passenger traffic and send messages direct to phones in a bid to improve safety at stations. When complete, the system which is currently undergoing testing will be able to interact with smartphone handsets by using proximity technologies to collect data from and push information to handsets. The company behind the system, YPB Systems, is working with Mebourne’s Monash ...

Strava built a popular social network for millions of runners and cyclists. But more than 100 cities and states are quietly working with the app, too. Every 40 days, a million people join Strava. It’s a staggering number for a niche social network aimed at athletes– but then again, Strava came along at the right time. The company, which was founded in 2009, has grown up alongside a groundswell of new cyclists and walkers in communities around the U.S. By some counts, commuting by bike has ...

“To help close the gap between public transit and your doorstep, we’re teaming up with Amtrak,” announced Lyft, Uber’s largest competitor, earlier this month. The partnership will allow Americans to ditch their cars and let the sharing economy deliver them seamlessly to and from the train station. Compelling, right? For urban policymakers, maybe not. Public-private partnerships (we can debate whether Amtrak is public or private later, rail nerds) seek to solve the first/last mile ...

Uber’s lifting the veil – just a little – to provide data on urban transportation performance. Uber’s new Movement tool provides valuable new source of data about travel times in urban environments. We’ve gotten an early look at Movement, and think its something that you’ll want to investigate, if you’re interested in urban transportation. Uber likes to bill itself as a technology company, rather than a transportation company: technically, it’s the independent driver-owners of ...