Features

Truly innovative is Roadtec’s Shuttle Buggy material transfer vehicle. John Irvine, President of Roadtec, explains how and why the ‘Buggy’ changed the game of asphalt paving Road paving technology changed dramatically in the 1930s when the American inventor Harry Barber unveiled the very first asphalt paver. Barber was what we today would call a “game-changer”. Innovations like Barber’s don’t come around often. In fact, decades can pass until another breakthrough product pushes the productivity and q

As far as 99% of any city’s population is concerned, street lights are just, well, there. But big changes are taking place, as explained by lighting systems provider Philips Lighting. Street lighting has been with us for more than a century. With the exception of the early 20th century switchover from gas to electricity and the recent most important invention of LEDs, there have been few obvious changes.

Autonomous vehicles that can move around without human intervention are not yet a part of everyday life, but they are almost within reach.

Situated on India’s northern frontier, the state of Jammu and Kashmir is world-renowned for its aesthetic vistas and captivating landscapes. The arterial roads connecting the city of Jammu to that of Srinagar is a challenge to maintain, being constantly exposed to harsh weather and overburdened with vehicular movement. Leica Geosystems has been involved in the Chenani-Nashri tunnel project, India’s longest road tunnel and which will be part of an alternate route in the region

When Trimble first launched its Quantm software system a decade or so ago, the company was making an important step into end-to-end BIM modelling. The rules of the game were changing fast. Adrian Greeman reports When survey and machine control equipment maker Trimble bought the Australian road planning software system Quantm in 2006 it might not have realised quite what it was leading to. A decade later, Quantm is helping to put Trimble among the big players in the BIM (building information modelling) en

Design and construction software specialist Bentley Systems is strengthening its position in the market with the introduction of new software advances as well as a series of strategic business moves. This allows the company to offer new solutions and technologies to its client base, as well as reaching out to new business segments The firm is introducing an array of powerful tools to the market. A key launch is for the OpenRoads Designer CONNECT Edition, which is the successor to Bentley’s well-proven an

The Ammann team was confident it had a game-changer on its stand when the 2007 bauma exhibition opened in Munich. The company’s RAH100 asphalt dryer was about to take a massive step forward for the global highway industry – and to lead the market for years to come Ammann’s RAH100 wasn’t a simple upgrade of an existing product. It was much bigger than that. The dryer offered the ability to utilise 100% recycled asphalt … a benefit no other competitor could match. “That 100% utilisation rate was a miles

Shell’s highly innovative bitumen and asphalt solutions are helping create future-ready urban road networks around the world to meet the needs of today and tomorrow. Shell’s general manager of bitumen technology, Professor John Read, takes a look at some of the company’s game-changing ideas. The next 30 or so years will see a significant transformation in the way we live. Whereas almost 75% of the world’s population lived in rural locations in 1950, around 75% will live in cities by 2050. The global popu

As World Highways celebrates its 25-year anniversary this month, we thought that it would be a good moment to take a step back and look at the exciting times we live and work in, and pick out a few of the game-changing new products, technologies and services that have brought about so much innovation in our industry over the past quarter of a century. Where will these new ways of thinking and working take us next? The global highways market has been transformed in the lifetime of World Highways by high-v

Tunnelling innovation is creating mountains of data for contractors and designers, delegates to a recent British Tunnelling Society (BTS) conference heard Successful innovation in tunnelling techniques and technologies is creating more and more data, thanks to digitalisation.

New Zealand’s biggest road project is less than a year away from completion, and a lot of progress has been made since World Highways last looked at the project two years ago - Mary Searle Bell reports New Zealand’s Waterview project is moving closer to completion and will be the largest road project in the country. The NZ$2 billion Western Ring Route will see the creation of an alternative motorway to State Highway 1, which runs through the centre of Auckland. The 47km-long motorway will allow a large p

Three Wirtgen cold milling machines – two of type W 210 and one of type W 200i – and two Wirtgen soil stabilizers of type WR 2000 demonstrate their productivity and reliability at Alghero-Fertilia Airport in Sardinia. Located roughly 8 km northwest of the city of Alghero, Alghero-Fertilia Airport (IATA: AHO, ICAO: LIEA) is one of three commercial airports on the Italian island, along with Cagliari Elmas and Olbia. Built as a military airport in the late 1930s, Alghero-Fertilia still occasionally serve

Four job sites, four contractors, four German states, one paving method: Dual-layer concrete paving with the slipform paver SP 1500 from Wirtgen is on the road to success in Germany. Swayed by the numerous economic and technical advantages, more and more planning engineers are opting for this technology when rehabilitating concrete highways.

The Indian Government is keen to embrace new technologies and ideas from overseas but as Hitex International discovered, Indian roads need very special products - Kristina Smith reports

Anti-stripping agents are often overlooked when boosting the performance of asphalt, according to Italian road chemicals producer Iterchimica