Features

New ownership offers greater overseas potential for Barrier Systems

Further development of SCT's wooden and steel barrier systems has led them to meet a wider array of applications. The company has had particular success with its wooden barrier range in areas of natural beauty and hopes to capitalise on this as the wider range comes to market.

Barrier Systems says that its new tensioned barrier offers high energy absorbing capabilities in head-on collisions. The company says that this is because the X-Tension technology is a tension-based solution rather than compression-based. The new range delivers good performance in these applications, as energy is absorbed with resistance at the impact head rather than being transferred down the rail as occurs with other systems. Even high-angle (15° during testing) impacts on the nose resulted in the vehicl

Moves are being made to develop barrier protection for motorcyclists. Many public highway authorities take little note of motorcycle riders at present, considering them a small minority and assuming that any additional safety measures will be costly and provide little gain in saving lives. In spite of this narrow minded attitude, some manufacturers have recognised that niche opportunities exist to improve safety levels for powered two wheeler users through developing innovative new products. Italian barrier

A steady flow of new technology and systems is ensuring the highway barrier sector is seeing major gains in safety. Mike Woof reports A combination of technological development and tougher regulations are ensuring a constant flow of new safety barrier solutions for the highway sector. Issues such as containment and deflection are high on the technical agenda, while a wide array of technologies is being developed to meet specific needs for certain applications. Both in the US and Europe, an increased focus o

New road barrier concepts offer major gains in highway safety.

The IRF presented 12 Global Road Achievement Awards (GRAA), the 2008 Student Essay Competition winner, and three Lifetime Distinguished Service Awards at its Annual Awards Banquet at The Mayflower Hotel, Washington DC on 12 January.

Russian construction firm Kamdorstroy has carried out a successful demonstration of recycling techniques to over 60 highway officials, academics and contractors from all over the CIS states. The demonstration was carried out in co-operation with the Russian Federal Highway and Tatarstan Highway authorities and involved milling, recycling and overlaying a road with hot mix asphalt. The work was carried out on a 7.5m wide roadway with 3.8m wide lanes (with an overlap) using machinery and techniques new to Rus

Improved surface quality and improved machine design are key trends in the asphalt paving sector, Mike Woof reports There is a big difference in asphalt paving techniques in North America and Europe. In North America, the need to construct long stretches of highway quickly resulted in wide pavers offering high throughput capacity, with compaction equipment then being used to achieve the required density of the various courses. In Europe's highway construction projects, distances tend to be shorter and contr

Managing utility works effectively is important, given that digging up roads and then patching them can dramatically cut the life of a road surface. New software tools make this process easier to manage effectively and Bentley Systems is extending its Expert Designer V8i package to include water, gas, and communications infrastructure, in addition to electric utilities. This allows utility firms and engineering contractors using Expert Designer V8i to boost the efficiency of utility network design projects.

IRF releases World Road Statistics (WRS), containing road data covering the period 2002-2007. The WRS 2009 includes high quality road and transport statistics for more than 185 countries, which have been compiled from a wide range of national, international and intergovernmental sources

Arrangements are proceeding full-speed ahead for what promises to be an exceptional IRF World Meeting from 25-28 May in Lisbon, Portugal. An outstanding technical programme has been finalised, the last remaining exhibition stands are being snapped up and an exhilarating social programme is in place.

A joint development project between Delcan Corporation and Intelligent Devices Incorporated (IDI) has resulted in the sophisticated Intelligent NETworks product. This is an integrated product that combines the IDI Intelligent Control NTCIP system with the Delcan advanced transportation applications of NETworks. The system can be linked to dynamic message signs (DMS), CCTV and vehicle detector stations (VDS), traffic intersections, as well as environment road weather sensor stations.

Intelligent data handling and management technologies are helping boost operating efficiency - Mike Woof reports The construction software sector and GIS market are seeing a rapid development of new products and technologies that will help boost efficiency, with factors such as data management and platform integration being key focus areas.

Several key highway construction innovations will be unveiled at the Intermat show