Archive for March, 2015

Podcar City 9: Invitation for Presenters Abstracts

March 27th, 2015

Podcar City 9 November 4-6, 2015: Invitation for Presenters Abstracts due April 30

Podcar City 9 is the go-to event for the Automated Transit Networks community

Podcar City is coming to Silicon Valley, the home of technology innovation, automation and entrepreneurship – but also an area with severe highway congestion, increasing employment and growing need for sustainable mobility.

Podcar City conferences are organized by the Institute for Sustainable Transportation of Sweden and its California sister organization, the International Institute of Sustainable Transportation, INIST, and sponsored by the Advanced Transit Association, ATRA. Podcar City conferences have been held since 2007 in Sweden, Germany and the USA.

Opportunities for presenters

The conference provides the prime opportunity for reaching a leading professional group of individuals and institutions in the Automated Transit Network community, and organizations involved in related development. All proceedings are recorded and distributed through INIST, the Podcar City website, and YouTube. The material gets considerable attention with many downloads every year.

The conference program will address the role of podcars and automated transit networks in multimodal shared mobility; and the interplay between mobility, energy, cityscape and livability. We invite you to submit an abstract for a paper, poster and/or presentation. We also encourage publication in the Journal of Advanced Transportation or the Transportation Research Board.

Expected participants and target groups

We anticipate an audience of 150-250 professionals and an additional 100 university students from several career paths. The main target groups are:

  • Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) providers
  • Transportation vehicle and system manufacturers
  • Transport infrastructure engineering companies
  • Architects and builders
  • Shared-Mobility and Demand-Response experts
  • Private and academic researchers and institutions
  • Entrepreneurs in vehicle automation
  • Transportation Network Companies
  • City planners and transit planners
  • Consultants and experts in transportation, urban design and smart cities
  • Business and project developers
  • Venture capital groups and investors
  • Elected officialsWe welcome your half-page abstract to program [at] podcarcity.org on or before April 30. For more information on how to participate as a presenter, please visit the program website, www.podcarcity.org/SiliconValley or contact

Ingmar Andréasson, Program Chair, program [at] podcarcity.org

What to plan for when planning for Automated Transit Networks

March 24th, 2015

Date: April 22nd at 15.00pm UTC/GMT

The webinar is to discuss the key aspects of assessing whether advanced transit systems such as personal rapid transit (PRT) and group rapid transit (GRT) are a fit with the application’s requirements and characteristics. Featured expert speakers represent ARUP, Lea+Elliott and PRT Consulting.

arup-prt-riverThe webinar will last approximately 40 minutes after which there will be opportunity to ask questions to the speakers and members of the ATRA Industry Group.

During the session we will be covering topics such as:

  • Where to start with the assessment? What information is required to start evaluating the potential project?
  • What capacity can ATN realistically provide? Can they handle surge loads?
  • What is required in terms of right-of-way? How can they be integrated into an existing urban environment?

You can register for the webinar via the link below. As the room accommodates 100 attendees only, please be sure to join on time! You can participate under your name or an alias if you desire to remain anonymous.

https://webmeeting.umd.edu/atraigwebinar/

This webinar is the first in a series of three webinars.

The other webinars in this series are:

  • May 20th: ”Where are Automated Transit Networks now?”
  • June 17th: “Where is autonomous transit going next?”

The First Annual Martin Lowson Paper Award

March 4th, 2015

martin lowson$500.00 paper award DUE BY March 31, 2015

Due to the generous support from the Lowson family, an annual student paper award has been established. The late Martin Lowson was the visionary behind the ATN system at Heathrow airport. He loved working with students and fostering their creative and innovative ideas. Due to his dedication, hard work and entrepreneurial qualities the modern ATN vision was realized. ATRA thanks his family and honors his legacy with this award.

ATRA fosters the development of automation and networking to advance the quality and sustainability of transportation, particularly for our urban areas. The objective is to recognize high quality, original work that advances the thought and practice of fully automated networked public mobility systems. The inaugural student ATRA paper competition is now accepting papers! Papers must be authored and/or published by students within the last 5 years. To qualify as a student, the person must be enrolled at a degree granting institution either at the time of the authorship or publication/presentation of the paper, or time of submittal to the ATRA competition. The paper can have been previously published or have received prior awards. Papers may have been submitted to journals and/or conferences (in fact ATRA encourages this), or may be unique to the ATRA competition. The emphasis in the inaugural 2015 award is on Automated Transit Networks toward sustainable urban mobility.

In addition to the award amount, assistance may be provided to attend and present that paper at a suitable conference. The competition requires that you follow TRB paper guidelines for a blind peer review and selection process. ATRA reserves the right to publish all submitted papers on its website. Please submit all papers to: smcdonald@siu.edu by March 31, 2015.