Road Structures

Belgium is considering tolling options as a mean to fund necessary road and tunnel developments and upgrades. The Brussels region is expected to spend between €500 million and €1 billion in order to update a series of key tunnel connections, with tolling being considered to raise a part of the funds required. A toll could be applied for the Léopold II tunnel during peak hours. According to Belgian consultancy company Stratec, traffic congestion could be reduced in Brussels by implementing an area charge dur

India’s Ministry of Transport and Highways is looking to source loans to help fund highway development. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) looks set to provide a partial source for the funding required. In all just over US$885 million will be needed to pay for India’s National Highway Development Project (NHDP). The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has approved a loan of just over $590 million for the Indian Government-run National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corp (NH

The Roe Highway Extension (Roe 8) project in Western Australia (WA) will undergo a new environmental approval process. This follows a ruling by the WA Supreme Court that previous approvals for the project were invalid. Roe 8's approval was disputed in the court by the Save Beeliar Wetlands Group that argued the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) did not apply policies on land offsets when evaluating the project. The WA state government said that Roe 8 is an important part of the US$1.1 billion (A$1.6

The Indian Government has announced plans for major road projects in Bihar, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu. A 222km road upgrade project will expand the National Highway 2 in Bihar and Jharkhand. The work is expected to cost around US$725.5 million and involves widening the route to six lanes, with three in either direction. The stretch of the NH – 2 planned for this upgrade will run from the Aurangabad Bihar/Jharkhand Border - Barwa Adda. Nine roads in the state of Tamil Nadu will be upgraded, with the work expe

In the UK the Lanes Group is carrying out the contract to build specialist drainage for the New Wear Bridge in Sunderland. The Lanes Group will carry out this work for the joint venture partners building the new bridge link.

Bridges in seven European countries are part of a three-and-a-half-year programme to develop an inexpensive and low-power wireless structural health monitoring technique. Project SENSKIN, launched last summer in Athens, will run until December 2018. It is focussed on applying a skin-like sensor that offers spatial sensing of irregular surfaces, especially transportation bridges. Up to now, structural health monitoring has relied on a point-based system that requires a dense network of sensors over the bridg

Mexico is on track to complete works on 20 new motorways and 26 additional roads by the end of 2016. The Secretariat of Communications and Transport (SCT) has further plans to develop 52 new motorways and 90 roads under its infrastructure programme during the current administration, which concludes in 2018. These infrastructure projects are intended to turn Mexico into a global logistics hub. The Mexico-Toluca, Mexico-Cuernavaca and Mexico-Puebla motorways are amongst the projects due to see major progress