Road Structures

Road widening on the Tullamarine Freeway in the Australian city of Melbourne is helping to cut congestion. The US$962 million (A$1.3 billion) project is nearly complete, but the sections finished already are now having a positive benefit for traffic flow. This has reduced journey times to and from the city’s main airport, with further benefits expected once the work on the route is completed in August 2018.

Sweden and Denmark are considering a fixed link between Helsingør and Helsingborg, either a a road, railway or road-rail. The link would cross The Øresund, a straight separating the two countries that is only 6.7km wide between the Danish city of Helsingør and the Swedish city of Helsingborg. Investigations, likely to cost around €2.3 million including €1 million from the European Union, will start this month with a final report by 2020.

Construction will commence in 2019 for a new bypass stretch around Krasnodar in Russia. The project is for the western bypass for Krasnodar (South), which will link the route from Krasnodar to Temryuk with the M-4 Don Federal highway. The new road stretch provides a key link for the new highway and bridge route across the Kerch Strait to connect with the Crimean Peninsula. The bypass section is designed to carry up to 30,000 vehicles/day.

New Zealand is increasing its budget for road safety measures. Included in the plan for the 2018/2019 period will be a series of upgrades to noted danger spots on local roads as well as improving intersections. The budget will now be US$2.76 billion (NZ$4 billion), an increase from the $2.48 billion (NZ$3.6 billion) for the 2017/2018 period.

Acrow Bridge has supplied a long-term temporary modular bridge to main contractor KPH Turcot for its work on the Turcot Interchange reconstruction in Montréal, Canada. The 32.3m-long Turcot modular steel bridge - Acrow’s longest clear span bridge in Canada – is 5m wide and has an orthotropic deck. The rented Acrow components arrived on site late last year and the bridge was opened to traffic in December. It is expected to be in place for two years. The Turcot Interchange is a three-level stack freeway int

The reduced footprint and floating counterweight meant that it is much more efficient for contractors to barge-mount a crawler crane. The crane can be on smaller water-based barges because the machine automatically adjusts its centre of gravity for each lift. Kraemer North America recently used an MLC300 to help replace an 84-year-old truss bridge, the 756m Savanna-Sabula Bridge near Savanna, in the US state of Illinois. The Savanna–Sabula Bridge was a truss bridge and causeway crossing the Mississippi Ri

In Panama work is being planned to upgrade the country’s stretch of the important Panamericana Highway. The upgrade will improve capacity and safety on the Panama stretch of the highway, which provides a key link through Central America, connecting South America with North America. Work on the Panama stretch of the Panamericana is expected to cost some US$543 million in all. The contract for the engineering services work will be carried out by Viaponte.

Amey has begun work on a major cycle scheme in the UK city of Birmingham worth around €6.1 million The A38 corridor scheme will deliver a 4km two-way fully segregated cycle route as part of the city’s Cycle Revolution plan to make cycling an everyday way to travel. The route will link the Selly Oak and the University of Birmingham areas with the city centre. Amey has already delivered phase one of the cycle programme and is working on a similar 4km cycle route on the north of the city. This is in addition

Crane manufacturer Manitowoc is developing its share of the market in the Philippines, both for its tower cranes and Grove mobile truck cranes. The firm now has sales managers responsible for the Manitowoc and Grove ranges. Michael Sanares is responsible for Grove mobile crane sales, while Carlo Tarifa handles Potain tower crane sales for southern Philippines and Albert Hernandez is in charge of Potain tower crane sales for northern Philippines. The firm says that it is expanding its sales team with the t