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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.

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

Plans are being considered for either a tunnel or bridge to connect Sri Lanka and India. The preferred route would be from Dhanushkodi in India to Talaimannar on the Sri Lankan island of Mannar. Building this 23km link could cost around US$3.62 billion according to estimates. Spanning the Pak Strait with a bridge might leave such a structure vulnerable to tsunami as well as typhoons however. It is worth noting that Sri Lanka’s south western coast was devastated some years ago by a tsunami precipitated by an

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

Foreign road users could be paying up to €130 (US$147) a year for using Germany's autobahn motorways starting in 2016. The plan was given the go-ahead by the German government last October but implementation could be delayed if it faces a legal challenge by European member states. Bavarian state transport minister Alexander Dobrindt said he was convinced that the draft law does not discriminate against foreign motorists, an issue if the law were to be challenged in any European court. He called the infras

An improved situation with regard to road safety has been noted in the UAE. The road crash rate for 2014 was 6.2% lower than for 2013. There were 4,806 crashes in 2014, causing 7,487 injuries and 712 deaths. However insurance payouts from crashes rose by 11% to a total of US$1.09 billion for 2014 compared with the previous year.