News

The Slovak capital Bratislava has set aside €44.5 million for road construction and repairs during 2016. The road budget is part of next year’s general budget of nearly €281 million from which public transport will receive just over €70 million and integrated transport systems will get nearly €3 million. World Highways reported in June that controversy continues to surround a proposed D4 motorway bypass around Bratislava and what tunnel option under the Little Carpathian Mountains is the best value.

Cubic has opened an Innovation Centre in London with the aim of advancing mobility in urban transportation. The centre is effectively a space that can be configured to accommodate any number of business needs and will be used as a meeting venue for company employees, transport planners and operators, universities and research establishments from the UK and elsewhere. It will host discussions about all travel modes (roads, bikes, bus, walking, rail, metro, and ferry) as well as the interaction between mod

The new elevated motorway connecting Mexico City ring road with Mexico-Cuernavaca motorway is due for completion in March 2016. The Mexican Secretariat of Communications and Transport (SCT) originally said that the link would be completed by December 31st 2015. The delays have been attributed to the complication in coordinating operations between the construction of a 5km-stretch built by SCT and the 2km section built by Mexico City’s Government. The two works could not be carried out at the same time. When

The cost of rebuilding the Leopold II tunnel in Brussels has increased from original estimates. The tunnel runs from the Koekelberg Basilica to central Brussels and the three year contract is planned to commence in 2017. Two funding options are in the frame with a conventional tender process and annual maintenance deal expected to cost €450 million. The design, build, finance and maintain (DBFM) option would cost €665 million over a 30 year period meanwhile.

A new report is now available detailing the performance of the demolition industry within Europe during 2015. This has been produce by the European Demolition Association (EDA) and is titled the European Demolition Industry Report 2015. The report was compiled by the Deutscher Abbruchverband (DA), the Statistics Working Group of the EDA, headed by Andreas Pocha, general manager of DA.

New safety requirements could see vehicles in Europe being fitted with in-car technology to cut crashes. The European Commission is working on plans to develop new a safety strategy that will require vehicle producers to introduce new systems. One of the technologies being considered is for in-car systems that would use facial recognition camera systems to detect whether a driver is fatigued at the wheel or using a cellphone while driving. According to the Transport Research Laboratory, this technology coul

A new tool for investigating road safety factors has been developed in the UK by Road Safety Analysis (RSA). The MAST Online system allows users to identify factors causing road crashes in specific areas as well as looking into the local impact of these crashes. This tool is already being used in the UK by local authorities to develop plans that can help optimise road safety. The latest version of the MAST system provides immediate access to data on eight key issues, including injuries to vulnerable road

New research from the US shows that texting while driving has become a major cause of deaths and injuries amongst youngsters in the US. Using smartphones for texting or accessing the internet while at the wheel is the biggest single cause of death for teenagers in the US according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The report says that in spite of 45 US states having banned drivers from sending texts or emails while at the wheel, up to 660,000/hour are using smartphones

Florida’s I-4 Ultimate highway project recently won a major award. The I-4 won the Best Transport Project award at the 2015 P3 Awards ceremony. Among entries, the US$2.3 billion highway project was recognised for its scale, complexity, and overall performance. Stretching through Orlando, the I-4 Ultimate project is a massive makeover of 33.6km of highway. It includes over a dozen reconstructed interchanges, 74 rebuilt bridges, 53 new bridges, and construction of four new express lanes. According to the P

Three major new bridge projects are now being carried out in Vietnam. All three of the bridges are being carried out under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model with completion scheduled for 2018. The 3.26km Chau Doc Bridge will link the towns of Tan Chau and Chau Doc in An Giang Province. Meanwhile the other two bridges will improve the road connection between Tra Ving Province and Soc Trang Province. The Dai Nghia Bridge No1 measures 0.86km long while the Dai Nghia Bridge No2 measures 2.24km long.

A new report highlights the poor conditions of Russia’s roads. The latest Global Competitiveness Report 2015-2016 shows that is in 123rd position worldwide in terms of road quality. The report is based on polls carried out from Russian businessmen and assessed the quality of local roads at 2.7 points on average on a scale from 1 - 7. However this ranking is an improvement on the previous report carried out in 2012, when Russia’s roads scored 136th worldwide for quality.

A loan facility will help pay for new road development planned for Honduras. The US$150 million, 20 year loan has been approved by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI). The PIV road infrastructure scheme set out by Honduras is intended to develop the country’s network. The funding will be used on over 180kms of roads in various parts of the country.

Plans are in hand in Malaysia to build a new highway costing US$1.06 billion. The route will run from Jelapang-Selama-Batu Kawan and the proposal has been put forward by Beta Mutiara. The three-lane highway will stretch for 116km between Jelapang, Perak and Batu Kawan, Penang. Should the work get the go ahead the project would be carried out by Beta Mutiara subsidiary BMT Jelas.

State-owned Indonesian toll road firm Jasa Marga plans to increase its network by 460km by 2018. This will bring its total network to 1,050km by 2018. During 2016, Jasa Marga intends to spend US1 billion developing its toll road network and general operations. By 2018, the Trans Java toll road should be open to traffic.