Jakarta gets ‘vehicle-free’ streets on Sunday mornings

The estimated US$2.94 billion (IDR 24 trillion) contract for the construction of the Jakarta Integrated Tunnel (JIT) project in Indonesia has been awarded to private construction company Antaredja Mulia Jaya (Antaredja), with construction work due to start by the end of 2014.

When it was completed in 1965 – just six years after the Auckland Harbour Bridge – the six-lane Newmarket Viaduct with its tall, slender piers was something of an engineering wonder, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Forty years on it had become a much-maligned contributor to Auckland’s chronic traffic congestion, too weak seismically to withstand the heaviest loaded trucks let alone a severe earthquake, so narrow in the shoulders that any accident stopped traffic flow and made it difficult

The incoming president of the Institute of Highway Engineers (IHE) has called for the UK to consider banning HGVs from its motorways on Sundays. Richard Hayes, who takes up his new role at the IHE AGM tomorrow, said he will be writing to the Roads Minister, Mike Penning, to request the Department of Transport investigates a possible ban. Hayes said several mainland European Union countries impose restrictions on the times and days when HGVs can be driven on public roads. France, Spain and Italy have a gene