#motorway-vignette

#motorway-vignette

The new checks, part of the EU's new Entry/Exit System (EES), collect digital personal records of third country nationals travelling to the Schengen area and replace the manual stamping of passports.

The idea is to prevent visitors overstaying; the consequence is a 70% increase in security processing times, according to the trade body Airports Council International.

According to a survey of over 13,000 members conducted by the AA, an estimated 21.7 million journeys are expected across the UK on Thursday, making this one of the busiest Easters in recent years.

Oversized models, such as large SUVs, make it harder for drivers to see people walking and cycling nearby. SUVs are 14 per cent more likely to kill people walking and cycling than other passenger cars, and 77 per cent more likely to kill children up to the age of 18 in England.

In 2025, German car companies earned nearly 44% less than in 2024, with earnings before interest and taxes dropping to just 24.9 billion, the lowest since 2020.

The European Commission stated that Slovakia's decision to charge foreign drivers more for diesel is highly discriminatory and against EU law, emphasizing that measures must not discriminate between nationality.

The planned order is expected to include 12-meter and 18-meter vehicles, and potentially also 24-meter bi-articulated trolleybuses. All units will be equipped with traction batteries enabling off-wire operation. The new trolleybuses are expected to cover at least 20 kilometers without overhead wires, while remaining fully compatible with Riga's extensive existing trolleybus infrastructure.

In 2025, 171 hours were spent stuck in a jam during peak hours, a figure that is equivalent to five working days, according to data from the navigator company Tom Tom. Based on figures collected by GPS devices, the data reveals that it takes drivers 62.5% longer to cover the same distance they would cover when the traffic circulates more smoothly. During peak hours, the average speed was 18.5 km/h (11.5 mph) and the distance covered in 15 minutes was 4.6 km (2.8 miles).

E-Z Pass' plastic transponders could soon be replaced by stickers equipped with digital chips and barcodes. The change would mean no need to mount your transponder in the perfect spot, or hold it up while passing through toll plazas. First, officials say 3,000 turnpike vehicles will test out the stickers during an 8-week pilot program.

Europe's ageing fleet of nearly 2,000 ferries are a large but overlooked source of foul air in coastal cities. Emissions of sulphurous oxides toxic gases that smell like burnt matches and rotten eggs react to form tiny particles that penetrate the lungs, ride the bloodstream and damage organs throughout the body.

Heating, cooling, and battery temperature control are among the biggest energy consumers in electric buses today - and thus have a direct impact on range, availability, and operating costs.

UK motorists are facing higher vehicle ownership costs after Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed changes to Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) that will increase charges from April 2026. The policy, implemented through HM Treasury fiscal reforms, forms part of a wider transition toward emissions-based transport taxation as fuel duty revenues decline. Officials say the system is designed to balance climate targets with long-term funding for road infrastructure. The steepest increases will affect motorists buying high-pollution cars.

It's tempting to frame autonomous driving as a single leap. In public transport, adoption tends to be incremental - because the system is built for reliability, and new capabilities have to fit into daily operations without disrupting service. That is why a practical strategy is evolution, not revolution: introduce autonomy in a defined domain, learn safely in real operations, and expand capability step-by-step.

Low average speeds in London are often interpreted as extreme congestion but that misses the full picture.

Official evaluations from National Highways, some of which had been held back by the Department for Transport (DfT) since completion in 2023, showed that a slew of big projects to convert the hard shoulder on the M1, M4, M6 and M25 were rated as poor or very poor value. The AA said the long-awaited reports revealed smart motorways had been a catastrophic waste of time, money and effort, although the government said they showed the project could allow more vehicles to travel safely.

Bork!Bork!Bork! Just picture it. You're at a Swiss train station, looking for information on your connecting line. You peer up at the platform sign hoping to find out how long you'll be waiting and whether you're standing in the right place. But instead of helpful info, you see "* Installation log files are stored in /tmp." Gee, thanks a lot!

Construction work at the Regionalbuszentrum Schaffhausen is scheduled to begin on 2 March 2026, as VBSH details on its website. Commissioning and testing are planned for mid-2027, with definitive operations starting in the third quarter of 2027. In parallel, additional overnight charging stations will be installed at the Ebnatring depot hall, with commissioning aligned to the RBZ timeline.

London City Airport has introduced a drop-off fee, ending its status as the last London airport without such a charge. The fee will be 8 for up to five minutes, then 1 per additional minute, with a maximum stay of 10 minutes. London City Airport said Blue Badge holders would be exempt, and the fee for black cabs would be included in the meter fare, in line with Transport for London's agreement with other major airports.

The golden era of night trains had, it was previously assumed, gone for good amid the rise of low-cost, short-haul flights. But the new environmental imperatives suggested that they could be a glamorous part of a greener future, delivering a climate impact that was 28 times less than flying. The European Commission enthusiastically identified a plethora of potential new routes that it judged could be economically viable.

The western German state North Rhine-Westphalia is proposing a new package of measures and is calling on the federal government to strengthen safety on trains ahead of a Deutsche Bahn security summit in Berlin. The state, Germany's most populous, wants to expand the use of two-person teams among train conductors. It is also urging the national government to provide legal clarity for the wearing of body cameras on public transport, which is currently voluntary.

The Estrel Berlin hotel hosted in 2025 around 1,500 participants, 150 speakers, and over 100 exhibitors, with more than 20 vehicles on display across 7,500 square meters of exhibition space. The event has grown from its origins as the "VDV Electric Bus Conference and Trade Fair ElekBu" into a hub where operators, manufacturers, service providers, public authorities, policymakers, and associations exchange ideas and explore the future of mobility.

The vehicle supply contract was awarded to Iveco Bus shortly before Christmas. The press release does not specify the exact vehicle model ordered by LSE. However, given the reference to a Low-Entry configuration, the vehicles can reasonably be expected to belong to Iveco's Crossway LE Elec range, launched in 2023. The same model has been ordered in 200 units in Germany by the purchasing group "BusGruppe" in late 2024.