Image: Fiji Times

About 1500 open base taxis will be affected by the new taxi regulations introduced by the Land Transport Authority, says Fiji Open Base Taxis Association president Vijen Prasad. Mr. Prasad said open base taxi operators were mostly based in Lautoka and Nadi where searching for a permanent taxi base would be difficult.

“The main business areas in Nadi and Lautoka does not offer a lot of spaces for taxis or new bases,” said Mr Prasad. “Most of us will have to operate from residential areas and rural areas where less people are likely to use taxis.

LTA CEO Irimaia Rokosawa said the Authority now had the responsibility of operationalizing recent regulatory amendments in a structured and transparent manner. He said this included the removal of the taxi barrel draw system and the open taxi rank system, which would be replaced with the reintroduction of the base and stand framework, under which each taxi operator will be assigned to a designated base and stand.

“To allow for a smooth transition, existing taxi operators will be provided with adequate time to adjust to the new arrangement,” he said.

Source: Fiji Times

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The Automated Transportation Symposium (ATS26) will host a peer-reviewed poster session in San Diego on July 27-30, 2026. The Symposium brings together leaders from academia, industry, and government to explore the future of automated mobility. Poster presentations are an important part of the program, and we encourage you to apply to present your work!

The poster session will take place during the evening reception on Tuesday, July 28, and provide attendees the opportunity to engage with authors on important topics.

Each poster proposal should include an extended abstract (500 to 1000 words total) describing the poster’s contents, akin to what would be published in an academic journal article about a completed research or development project. Each abstract should include a discussion of each of the following in the online submittal form:

• The relevance of the content to automated road transportation
• The purpose of the work being reported
• The methodology used
• Key findings from the work and their significance for the implementation of automated road transportation systems.

Please note, commercial promotions will not be accepted. 

Poster proposals are due on April 26, 2026. Each proposal will be evaluated through a competitive peer review process. Authors will be notified of poster acceptance for presentation no later than May 27, 2026.

You can find out more about the topics of interest, judging criteria, and the submission link by clicking here.

Details on the Automated Transportation Symposium being held July 27-30 in San Diego can be found here.

Pilot and Co-Pilot Killed after Air Canada Jet Collision at LaGuardia New York

The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet have been killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport, in an incident that closed the airport. The collision also caused serious injuries, with nine people in the hospital. It happened as a firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

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Joby’s Electric Air Taxi Flies over San Francisco Eyeing Pilotless Aviation

Joby Aviation has kick-started a nationwide tour of its flying taxi. The first flight saw its aircraft fly over the San Francisco Bay Area and around the Golden Gate Bridge. The flight took place around the same time the FAA announced a nationwide pilot program aimed at finally making commercial air taxi services a reality.

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Car-Sharing Program Zipcar Rolls into Vail to Reduce Carbon Emissions, Parking Demands

A brand-new Zipcar, one of four, was unveiled in Vail Tuesday on the International Bridge, ushering in an era of car sharing the town hopes will start to both reduce its carbon output and the reliance of residents, workers and visitors on single-occupancy vehicles.

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Why Is Canada’s Public Transit So Much Cheaper — and Better — than the United States’?

In an article for The McGill International Review, George Wu attempts to answer this question. Wu points to some illuminating examples of this discrepancy: Montreal’s REM light rail system gets over 1.1 million passengers a day. Chicago, a city with a million more residents, records 200,000 fewer daily trips across its entire bus and rail system.

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TTC Still Figuring Out How to Handle Thousands of FIFA Fans This Summer

This summer, approximately 65,000 soccer fans will swarm the city’s waterfront to cheer at Toronto Stadium and the Fort York fan festival during the World Cup, but with only three months to go, the TTC has yet to paint a clear picture of how it will handle the stream of visitors. So far, the TTC's publicly-announced plans have been limited to the introduction of transit-only lanes on Bathurst and Dufferin streets, though some details about other service adjustments were shared by a spokesperson Wednesday at the request of CBC News.

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Water Taxis Revolutionising Urban Tourism in Vancouver

The global water taxi market is witnessing substantial growth, particularly in tourism-driven urban areas like Vancouver. The market, which was valued at USD 241.23 billion in 2025, is set to surge to USD 315.31 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.9 percent.

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WeRide Enters Slovakia Through ELEVATE Partnership

The move marks WeRide’s fourth European market after France, Belgium and Switzerland, and expands its global footprint to more than 40 cities across 12 countries. ELEVATE Slovakia brings together a range of public and private participants, including the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization, the City of Bratislava, Slovak Post, academic institutions and private companies.

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London: Lime to Bring in Smaller E-Bikes and GPS to Tackle Parking Mayhem

A major electric bike operator has responded to growing concerns about its transport models in London by introducing new measures and updated bikes, as it works to continue operating in the capital. The move comes after widespread complaints about bikes being left in the wrong places, blocking pavements and causing problems for pedestrians.

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Welcome to Paris, the City That Said No to Cars

Honking horns and screeching tires used to be a cliched scene-setting device for writers describing Paris. Those sounds no longer define a city where cars have taken a back seat. Visitors will discover that it’s a dramatically different place than a decade ago: lines of bikes and throngs of pedestrians where lanes were once jammed with cars, greenery encroaching on former pavement, summer swimming in the once-grimy Seine river — and a corresponding drop in air and water pollution.

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Bermuda: Ridesharing Given the Green Light by Senators

Senators have approved legislation to introduce ridesharing in Bermuda despite a lack of support from the Opposition. Mischa Fubler, the Junior Minister of Tourism and Transport, said the Motor Car (Ridesharing) Amendment Act 2026 was a “practical response to a well-documented challenge”. He said that despite the hard work of taxi operators, transportation has proved a point of friction for visitors, and the legislation would help to make the system more effective.

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Singapore’s Quikbot, EFGH Build Insurance into Physical AI Infrastructure to Tackle Autonomous Risk

QuikBot Technologies and Embedded Financial Group Holdings (EFGH) are integrating insurance directly into the infrastructure that governs autonomous machines. The move comes as companies confront growing questions around liability and safety in real-world AI deployments.

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Sodexo and Ottonomy Testing Autonomous Delivery Robot at a Remote Australian Mining Village

Autonomous delivery robots are moving into remote industrial environments, with Sodexo Australia piloting a food and essentials delivery system at a Rio Tinto mining village in Western Australia. Ottonomy said it is testing its autonomous delivery robot Ottobot at the Gudai-Darri site in the Pilbara region to deliver meals, snacks and other items directly to workers’ accommodations, reducing wait times and extending access to on-site services in a remote setting.

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Image: Rappler

CEBU, Philippines – It was unusual for motorcycle taxi driver Eric Arnival to wait 30 minutes before getting booked to ferry commuters in Cebu City on Wednesday, March 18.

For him and fellow driver Jobert del Servandil, bookings typically took only a few minutes before they had to return to the road, finish the journey, and repeat the same process for a day’s worth of work.

According to them, their earnings really depended on the number of ride bookings they could accomplish. If there were only a few, the best they could earn in a day was less than P1,000.

Following the second oil price hike on Tuesday, March 17, due to the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, motorcycle drivers-for-hire braced for impact, specifically in the form of reduced earnings.

Source: Rappler

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