Starting tomorrow, CDOT will start to display travel time data on 6th Avenue in an effort to provide improved traveler information to motorists. The system uses existing electronic message boards to post estimated travel times to specific destinations. CDOT has been displaying travel time data on the electronic signs located on the I-70 West mountain corridor for several years with much success and on C-470.

Recently CoTRIP.org, CDOT’s traffic conditions website, added numerous live streaming video cameras to the site, allowing you to see actual live video of traffic conditions.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has resurrected an idea to convert overhead freeway message signs into electronic advertising billboards in his latest effort to patch California’s cash-strapped budget.

The Summit Daily News reports that the Colorado Department of Transportation plans to install at least 10 more cameras along the Interstate 70 mountain corridor in the coming months.

The road cameras, available through www.cotrip.org and www.goi70.com as well as a local television station, offer viewers glimpses of traffic and road conditions.

The new cameras are to be installed between Frisco and Vail, as fiber optics over the pass have been extended, said Rodrick Mead, operations manager with Colorado Transportation Management Center.

Go to the Summit Daily News to see the entire article.

The view looking west on Wednesday afternoon at Harmony and Timberline in Fort Collins.

Fort Collins is in the forefront of using Intelligent Transportation Systems and the internet to get real-time local street conditions into the hands of drivers and others.

FCTrip promises to help you “travel smarter” and by deploying a network of sensors and cameras that calculate congestion levels and speeds, the city has brought to the local street level a part of what the Colorado Department of Transportation, through its COTrip site, delivers for Denver metro area freeways.

It’s a glimpse into what engineers can do to help drivers make decisions that help relieve congestion. Extending real-time systems like this to regional arterial streets instead of just freeways would be a big help to commuters, delivery drivers and other motorists whose daily travels don’t just consist of freeway driving.

The Dutch government plans to bring the polluter-pays principle into the home garage, Associated Press reports.

Rather than an annual road tax for their cars, drivers will soon pay a few cents for every kilometer (mile) on the road, in a plan aimed at breaking chronic traffic jams and cutting carbon emissions, the Cabinet decided Friday.

The GPS monitoring system could be a test case for other countries weighing options for easing crowded roads. Some cities like London have created congestion charges to control traffic in downtown areas, but only Singapore has a similar scheme for charging according to the amount of travel.

When the plan takes effect in 2012, new car prices will drop as much as 25 percent with the abolition of a purchase tax and the road tax, which now totals more than euro600 ($900) per year for a mid-sized car.

Instead, an average passenger car will pay euro0.03 per 1 kilometer ($0.07 per mile), with higher charges levied during rush hour and for traveling on congested roads. Trucks, commercial vehicles and bigger cars emitting more carbon dioxide will be assessed at a higher rate, the Transport Ministry said.

Go to the Associated Press report on Google News to see the entire article.

The government could use sat navs to impose a pay-as-you-go tax on car owners, The News of Portsmouth UK reported from a conference there.

Transport experts who gathered at the city’s university were told the continuing development of in-car technology meant that levying motorists for the number of miles they drive could become a reality by 2020.

Frederic Bruneteau, one of the speakers at the Intelligent Transport Systems conference, said that increasingly over the past 18 months motorists have been buying sat navs or smart phones with a two-way connection.

But, he said, by 2020 it is predicted they will be the norm, which could allow governments to charge motorists variable road tax depending on how far they drive.

Go to The News to see the entire article.

Researchers in the European Union are using telematics to create “road trains” that join the benefits of carpooling with the freedom of driving alone, the magazine Wired reports.

The latest concept, part of the EU’s Safe Road Trains for the Environment initiative, groups cars with similar destinations into road trains over long stretches of highway. The lead vehicle will be driven by an experienced motorist — it may even be a bus that regularly travels the route — while the functions of each following vehicle will be automatically controlled and tethered to the actions of the lead car so that individual drivers can hammer out e-mails or eat breakfast. Despite the project’s name, cars can exit at any time.

Go to Wired to read the entire article.

Taking real-time traffic and road condition information and getting it to drivers — so they can make realistic decisions about their travel plans — is a key component to managing traffic demand on the busy I-70 Mountain Corridor, a CDOT traffic engineer says, according to a report in the Summit Daily News.

Read the entire article at the Summit Daily News.

A dynamic speed bump that will lower and give motorists a smooth ride if they are driving slowly enoughis in development in Mexico, USA Today reports.

Concerns over the environment — and the utter annoyance of having to brake and accelerate frequently — have prompted one Mexican state government to embrace a “smart” speed bump that could make driving smoother, without sacrificing safety.

The device, being developed by Mexico-based Decano Industries, automatically lowers into the ground when drivers go the speed limit or slower. Drive too fast, and the bump stays up.

The technology is relatively basic: The speed bump is formed by two steel plates that form a triangle sticking out of the pavement. When a car tire touches the plate, a patented device under the triangle measures the force of the impact.

If the tire’s impact is gentle enough — that is, if the vehicle is traveling slowly — both plates immediately collapse into the ground under the weight of the car.

Read the entire article at USA Today.