Highway & Network Management

Norway’s new Hardanger Bridge is not carrying enough traffic according to the latest data available. According to the statistics for July 2014, some 3,500 vehicles/day crossed over the Hardanger Bridge (Hardangerbrua) in Norway. This was a notable increase from the 2,450 vehicles/day using the link in June 2014. This is higher than the normal volumes due to high levels of summer vacation traffic. However, it is not sufficiently high to hit the planned average of 1,950 vehicles/day for the whole year. The r

Balfour Beatty’s UK construction business has been awarded the €94.45 million (£75 million) A63 Castle Street improvement scheme in Hull for the Highways Agency under an Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) design and build contract. The 1.5km scheme in the centre of the city in East Yorkshire, northern England will improve journey times for road users through conversion of a major interchange into a split level junction with a two-lane dual carriageway carrying east-west traffic below north-south traffic in

Balfour Beatty is to work on a €163.5 million (£129 million) upgrade project for a 21.4km stretch of the M3 motorway in the UK. The work involves upgrading the route to smart motorway status and is being carried out for the UK Government’s Highways Agency. This project will increase capacity, reduce congestion and shorten journey times for the 120,000 motorists/day using the route. This section of the motorway runs through the counties of Hampshire and Surrey, between Junction 2 which is interchange with th

Between 10%-15% of all new cars sales in Finland will be electric car sales, according to the country’s VTT Technical Research Centre. In its new TransSmart programme, VTT says the percentages mean that around 15,000 electric cars would be sold a year by 2020. VTT researchers believe rechargeable hybrid cars will increase in popularity.

Balfour Beatty has won a €225 million (£184 million) motorway upgrade contract from the Highways Agency. A total of 27.3kms (17 miles) on the M60 and M72 will be upgraded. The work includes converting the carriageway between junctions 18 and 20 on the M72 to a four-lane motorway. The carriageway stretch between junctions 8 and 12 on the M60 will also be upgraded. Employing around 1,000, the work is due to begin this month (July 2014) and be completed by autumn 2017.

Peru’s capital Lima faces a huge US$50 billion gap in its highways and other infrastructure, according to an official from the Lima metropolitan municipality (MML). "According to the studies that we have carried out, Lima needs to invest US$50bn in infrastructure to ensure growth and to continue to attract investments," Arturo Delgado, MML's urban project advisor, was quoted as saying by local daily La República. Delgado stressed in the same article that investments should go towards constructing new road

Applications for this year’s International Road Federation (IRF) Global Road Achievement Awards (GRAA) had to be in by Monday 30 June 2014. GRAA is a one-of-a-kind competition to recognise innovative road projects and exemplary people that place the road industry at the forefront of worldwide social and economic development. The IRF views the awards as an important way to promote road innovation around the world and will make substantial efforts to see that the awarded achievements receive maximum wor

France saw its road deaths rise by almost a third in May 2014 compared to the same month of last year, according to new figures from Sécurité Routière. A total of 258 people were killed on France's roads in May 2014, 63 (32.3%) more than in May 2013. During this period, the number of people injured rose by 10%, or by 20% if only those requiring hospital treatment are included. Sécurité Routière’s figures show the number of accidents only increased slightly in the analysed period, but they were more severe.

An analytical road video surveillance system will be introduced in Moscow by the end of 2014 in a bid to reduce accidents and improve emergency services’ response to them. The system will automatically detect road accidents, traffic jams, and dangerous situations on the roads, as well as report on emergency situations to operators, who will make decisions on further actions. It will also analyse data from some 2,500 surveillance cameras and some 15,000 city cameras with a recording function.

UK motor insurance firm Aviva has called for tougher custodial sentences for fraudulent 'slam-ons' – road traffic accidents deliberately caused in order to claim for whiplash compensation – which increased by 51% in the UK during 2013, according to Aviva’s claims fraud data. These induced accidents have a value of over €12.5 million (£10 million) and are at the highest levels ever detected by the insurer. In total, Aviva has over 6,000 motor injury claims linked to organised fraud activity and is calling f