News

A substantial budgetary shortfall has been identified for repairs to roads in the Walloon Region of Belgium that €1 billion is needed to carry out necessary repairs to roads in the region. However the previous local administration had budgeted €600 million for the work.

Questions are being asked over the construction of a new section of the A1 autobahn in Germany. The highway stretch is being scrutinised due to surface failures and lies close to the city of Bremen but has been open for less than three months.

New data from The Co-operative Insurance in the UK says that new data shows that the introduction of telematics technology is leading to better driving behaviour from Britain's young road users. Intelligence gathered from the company’s 'smartbox' scheme shows that 35 per cent are consistently showing 'excellent' driving while less than five per cent demonstrate 'poor' driving habits.

Italian highway concessionaire ANAS is giving the go-ahead to a string of key projects that will improve the country’s road network. The tender process for the Novara bypass will start shortly and this will improve the Turin-Milan route. The work is expected to cost around €116 million but may be split into two contracts.

A major milestone has been achieved in New Zealand on a major road project that is intended to deal with a major traffic bottleneck in the city of Auckland. The launching gantry team has now installed the last segment of the new northbound viaduct, a key stage in the Newmarket Viaduct Replacement project. There is currently a 1.5m gap between the segments. So, on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th December the two viaducts will be cemented together in an 18 hour procedure known as the Stitch. From then until the e

Costs are climbing for Catalonia’s Eix de la Conreria highway project in Spain. The B-500 project is now expected to cost €400 million, a jump of €30 million from the previous estimate made just six months ago. The new link will connect Barcelona with Baix Maresme and Valles and the start of work on the project is also now expected to be delayed until 2012. The project requires the construction of four lanes with two running in either direction and is at present in the design and environmental assessment s

The UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) is introducing new rules that boost fines for companies that delay road works. The fines jump by a factor of ten from £2,500/day (€2,775/day) to £25,000/day (€27,750/day).

Three trees provided by Siemens have been planted in Southampton’s prestigious QE2 mile as part of the carbon offset programme included in the new traffic signals maintenance contract awarded to the company by Southampton City Council. Southampton's traffic signal engineer, Martin Wylie said: “We are working with Siemens on a number of initiatives to reduce the carbon emissions associated with our Intelligent Transport Systems.

A resolution drafted by Mathieu Grosch and adopted yesterday by the EU transport committee calls for the abolition of all remaining barriers and borders in order to complete the creation of a single transport area for goods and passengers which is competitive, co-modal and resource efficient. The vote reflects a broad political consensus on the main safety and environmental targets to be reached by 2020.

According to a Belgian police report, speed cameras cannot read licence plates correctly in the dark unless they are near to street lights. The report follows tests carried out between 10 and 21 January 2010 on the two most commonly used speed cameras in Belgium. The report also found that speed cameras are able to read yellow licence plates with black lettering more easily than other types of plates, such as the white plate with white background and red letters chosen by Belgium.

A report by Norway’s Public Roads Administration (Vegvesenet) indicates that a large proportion of the country’s trunk roads have either bad or very bad surfacing. The data shows that one-third of the country’s trunk road network is in poor condition and requires repair.

Bidding is healthy for a section of dual carriageway in Poland linking Kurow with Lublin. The section is 60km long and has been divided by the Polish General Directorate for National Roads and Motorways (GDDKiA) into five separate bids.

The latest data from Germany's Federal Statistics Office, Destatis, reveals a worrying increase in road related fatalities in the first three quarters of 2011. The death rate on the country’s roads rose by 5.9% to 2,938 for the period in comparison with 2010. However, the overall number of road accidents reported by the German police dropped by 1.4% to 1.71 million. These are preliminary figures and final data has still to be made available but the news of the increasing death rate gives major cause for con