Road Structures

Plans are now in hand to upgrade and straighten the Bruce Highway over the Cardwell Ridge in Australia. The US$102.45 million (A$115 million) project will be handled jointly by a team comprising consulting engineer, SMEC Australia and Abigroup Contractors.

The authorities in the Australian state of Victoria have carried out projects worth some US$2.75 billion (A$3.1 billion). This includes 1,250 road safety projects in all, such as improvement to an intersection between Airfield Road and Princes Highway East at Traralgon West and upgrades along Bloomfield Road from Nilma to Crossover to prevent run-off-road accidents. Upgrades are also being made to provide run-off-road treatments including guard fences, linemarking, powerpole relocation, shoulder sealing, tr

Work is now underway on India’s Rohtang tunnel project, located in Himachal Pradesh. The 9km long tunnel is expected to cost US$365.75 million and with work having just started, is due for completion before 2015. The project was first suggested back in 1983 but it has taken until now for the work to get underway. When complete the link will reduce the travel distance between the Lahaul Valley and the green Kullu Valley by 46km. The link will improve India’s transport connections to China. The 11m wide link

Two new roads are now being built in Mozambique by Portuguese firm Mota Engil Engenharia. The total package is worth some US$148 million (€116 million). These two roads are the latest in a series of contracts Mota Engil Engenharia has won in Mozambique during 2010. The company is already carrying out some €165 million of work on road, bridge and other infrastructure projects.

Finnish contractor Pöyry is starting work on a road inspection programme in Northern Argentina . The firm was awarded the €1 million contract to inspect works on provincial road #28 in Argentina by the Road Infrastructure National Programme. Pöyry is carrying out this Inter-American Development Bank financed project in partnership with local company IATASA and the technical services will be provided over a 36 month period.

The MISTRAS Group is handling a US$3.4 million contract for continuous structural health monitoring on the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. The client for this contract is the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) and MISTRAS will be responsible for installing and operating the package. The system is being installed on the bridge in response to a fatigue defect found on a structural steel beam in a regularly scheduled inspection during a holiday closure in 2009.

Plans are now in hand to tackle some of the chronic traffic congestion problems in Indian city Mumbai. Indian construction company, Reliance Infrastructure, will spend US$746.6 million building an eight-lane bridge between Worli and Haji Ali. The company entered an agreement with Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation. This new sea bridge should help address congestion issues for the roads in the south of Mumbai. The bridge is due for completion in 2014.

A loan from the Philippines-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) will help Sri Lanka rebuild roads damaged by its civil war. The US$154.4 million credit facility will be put toward projects such as repairing or replacing bridges and around 140km of provincial roads that were damaged in the north of Sri Lanka, where the civil war was most intense.

A consortium in Indonesia is being established to push ahead with the US$16.7 billion Sunda Straits Bridge project. Organisational input for the consortium is coming from Indonesia's Public Work Ministry and the group will comprise private investors, state-owned companies and regional government-owned companies in Lampung and Banten provinces. The consortium will have to be established by the end of 2010 for the programme to remain on track.

India intends to continue its massive investment in highway spending. Predictions for the next five years say that up to US$100 billion will be spent on road building in the country in the coming five years. The Ministry for Road Transport and Highways plans to build 35,000km of highways, with 60% being provided by the Government budget and 40% from the private sector. The Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways will open up tendering for nine highway projects. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI