Road Structures

A new highway has been constructed on the Caribbean island of Jamaica that will make a dramatic improvement in travel times and road safety for the country

Funding from China will help pay for key road repairs in Angola. The country will benefit from a credit line worth US$1 billion offered by China. The funds will be used to upgrade 17 important road links, although a focus for the repairs will be a stretch of National Highway 321 connecting Dondo with Maria Theresa. The projects form part of Angola’s National Construction and Renovation Plan and will be offered to Chinese road construction firms.

The second phase of Vietnam’s rural bridge building programme will construct around 4,000 bridges, many of them road bridges, and will start next month Nguyen Van Huyen, director of the Directorate for Roads, said many of the bridges will be suspension type and improve communication for around 5,200 communes in 50 provinces. A report by the English-language news agency VietNamNet quoted Nhuyen saying that priority will be given to 63 impoverished districts, many of them home to ethnic minorities.

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) awarded a US$2.75 million contract for a study to develop the corridor along a stretch of Interstate 635 (I-635) in Dallas. The two-year contract is for schematic, environmental and traffic studies for the construction of access roads along the growing section of highway and was awarded to Michael Baker International. As part of the contract, the Michael Baker team will conduct a number of detailed studies in advance of TxDOT’s plans to add more than 53km of

Mexico has no less than 20 major highway projects currently under construction. Of these, eight of the highway projects should be complete by the end of 2016. The highway projects are being delivered for Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transport (SCT), which is also overseeing the work. In addition to the highway projects, SCT is also overseeing road maintenance and upgrade activities to some 12,900km of federal roads. Another key programme being handled by SCT will see new road links to remote a

Key highway links in Chile are likely to see upgrading, although the operation of the links could change. The country’s Ministry of Public Works (MOP) is keen to see widening work for Ruta 68, a route currently operated by Abertis. However MOP has not revealed if it intends to buy back the Ruta 68 contract from the operator and then put the highway back out to tender, with the new deal then including the widening work. It may prove simpler to strike a new deal with Abertis that includes the necessary highwa

The construction of a new interchange to the south east of Casablanca in Morocco will make a substantial reduction in traffic congestion when it is complete. Work started on the interchange in February of this year, once of several major road projects being carried out in the area around the city. The work is expected to take 32 months to complete. The new interchange is much needed as Morocco’s traffic volumes have increased substantially in recent years due to a higher percentage of citizens owning privat