News

Chinese banks are providing US$297 million in loans for road construction in the Kyrgyz Republic. The loan will be used to carry out Phase II of the programme to construct the new North-South road. The project is for the construction of the 96km Aral-Kazarman road and also includes building a 700m stretch of tunnel along the route as part of the works.

Plans are progressing in Kazakhstan for the project to construct the Big Almaty Ring Road. A number of investors are involved in financing the project and are planning to invest US$1.2 billion in the ring road. The contract will include construction and operation of the project. Strong interest has been shown in the project by the EBRD, the Asian Development Bank, IFC, and the Islamic Development Bank. Meanwhile according to Kazakhstan's Committee of Roads, the economic effect of the Western Europe-Western

The UK’s Transport Rsearch Laboratory (TRL) is partnering with Transpolis in France to open an international test facility. This new partnership enables TRL and French road safety testing facility, Transpolis to deliver a full-scale testing service to a global client base. The partners are offering full scale safety and security barrier impact testing services. The partnership provides customers with a variety of full scale impact testing programmes from Transpolis’ test site in Lyon, France.

The Liebherr Group now has a new logistics centre located at Oberopfingen, Germany. This facility is supplying customers around the world with spare parts for the firm’s wheeled and crawler excavators, wheeled loaders and bulldozers, as well as some other machines. The new facility has been opened followinga policy of centralisation of parts supply. Work started to construct the facility in mid-2013.

According to a report from US-based research firm Freedonia, world demand for construction machinery will grow by 3.9%/year to $218 billion by 2019. The Asia/Pacific region, Central and South America, and the Africa/Mideast region are all expected to register above average gains looking ahead as construction spending, particularly on infrastructure projects, continues to increase. More than two-thirds of all additional construction equipment demand generated between 2014 and 2019 will be in China according

The tender process for the road connections to the third bridge over the Bosporus in Turkey has been delayed once more. This is the third time the tender for the connecting roads for Istanbul's third bridge over the Bosporus has been postponed. The tender for the North Marmara Motorway was originally set for 6th March 2015 but was then pushed back to the 6th May. It was then announced that the tender would be run in two stages, with the Kinali-Odayeri motorway tender on 7th July and the Kurtkoy-Akyazi motor

Columbian president Juan Manuel Santos Colombia has said pension fund money could help finance the country’s ambitious 4G motorway projects. Columbia has 35 road projects underway costing more than US$11.7 billion, including the first two 4G tender waves with six public-private partnerships that have already been approved. During a banking convention held in the coastal city of Cartagena in mid-June, Banco Davivienda president Efrain Forero lending capacity studies have been completed for 4GH projects

The Texas Transportation Commission has conditionally awarded the two companies, Flatiron and Dragados the contract to design, build and operate a new cable stayed Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge.

One of the world’s largest cranes has placed the first steel girder assembly for the approach span of the new NY Bridge, often called the Tappen Zee Bridge in New York. The barge-mounted I Lift NY super crane with its nearly 100m boom slowly picked up the 125m unit from its delivery barge and gently lowered it onto concrete pedestals in the Hudson River, near the Rockland County side of the bridge. The super crane will install even larger sections of the new bridge, some of which weigh around 907tonne

The US state of Oregon’s new pay-by-the-mile road usage charge program, OReGO, took a step forward last month.

User-pays is crystallising as the preferred option by governments and taxpayers around the world, said Jack Opiola, managing partner of international road usage charging consultancy, D’Artagnan Consulting. Opiola, who chaired a session at the inaugural IRF - Roads Australia Regional Conference for Asia and Australasia in Sydney earlier this month, has been working with several US states which are wrestling with the ‘who pays’ issue. “Some states are propping up their transportation funding with portio