News

The American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) is now open for entries in its annual national video contest on America’s transportation infrastructure. And for 2016, the 6th year this contest has been run, a new category covering road safety has been introduced. ARTBA says that students of all ages are encouraged to apply. The top four videos – one winner in each age group of the two categories - will each be awarded a US$500 cash prize. The winners will be shown at the association’s Natio

SIS, a subsidiary of Spanish contractor Sacyr, has won a €2.8 billion contract to build and operate the 186km Roma-Latina motorway in Italy. Autostrade Del Lazio, a public company created to build and manage the motorway, awarded the public private partnership contract, officially called Corridoio intermodale Roma-Latina e collegamento Cisterna-Valmontone. The SIS Scpa consortium, which consists of Sacyr (49%) and Fininc di Torino (51%), will build-operate-maintain the highway over 50 years. Revenue i

The Czech road management company RSD is seeking a contractor for construction of 15km of the D11 motorway between Hradec Kralove and Smirice. Both towns are in northern Czech Republic, near the Polish border. The work is worth around €218.3 million, according to Czech media, and is one of the last remaining sections of the D11 to be built. Construction of another section between the town of Trutnov and the border with Poland is likely to start in 2019 and the Jaromer-Trutnov section after 2020.

Construction of the third phase of the Vilnius western bypass may be finished this year, according to a report by Baltic News Network. Remigijus Simasius, mayor of the Lithuanian capital, the said work was ahead of the schedule for opening in the first quarter next year. The section, worth €105 million, will connect the highways of Vilnius–Kaunas–Klaipeda and Vilnius–Panevezys. Aldas Rusevičius, chief executive of Kauno Tiltai - Kaunas Bridges – the general contractor of the third phase, said that

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 upcoming CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017 exhibition has been named to the US Government’s ‘International Buyer Programme’ (IBP). This award is in recognition of the show’s global scope and reputation as a leading worldwide event. The IBP works to increase international attendance at US-based exhibitions and create global business opportunities for show exhibitors. A select number of US trade shows each year receive the IBP designation from the US Department of Commerce. “CONEXPO-CON/AGG is honoured to have

Peru's president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski - who won April’s general election by less than 1% of the popular vote - will continue many of the highway projects started under his predecessor. Kuczynski inherited the projects from Ollanta Humala who could not run again because constitutioinal limits on his terms in office. One of the largest projects is the 3,000km northern international highway from Sullana, a city and urban area of around 440,000, to the border with Ecuador. The co-financed private project

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.

A South Korean consortium is in line for a US$75 million loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for a project in Kazakhstan. The $900 million project around the city of Almaty will see development of a 66km highway with eight intersections and 21 bridges, according to a report in the Korea Herald. The consortium consists of Korea Expressway and SK Engineering and Construction (SK E&C), noted a report by the Korean news agency Pulse. Other banks that will provide loans to the cons

It’s 1948. The grand scheme of creating an Interstate Highway system in the US is still barely a twinkle in President Dwight Eisenhower’s military eye. Highway construction improved greatly in the late 1950s and early 1960s as the American contractors became more mechanized and therefore efficient at laying roads faster and of better quality. But how did they build a road back then in 1948? Thanks to Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, we have a movie of just how a concrete highway was created. The constr

Grants worth a total of US$800 million have been issued by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT).

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 Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) is to provide support as part of the UK’s new Specialist Professional and Technical Services (SPaTS) framework. The arrangement sees TRL providing road and transport related specialist technical services to Highways England, the Department for Transport and a number of other public sector bodies. TRL will deliver specialist back-up for research and innovation. The four year deal will provide Highways England with technical, commercial and specialist services. TRL is a