Features

Handling up to 450 take-offs/day, Runway West is Frankfurt Airport’s busiest runway. Over 50% of the aircraft taking off from the airport uses Runway West, and a point worth noting is that this German airport is one of the busiest in Europe. In 2016, Frankfurt Airport handled nearly 61 million passengers, surpassed by Schiphol in Amsterdam and Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Europe’s third and second busiest airports respectively. Meanwhile London’s Heathrow remained Europe’s busiest airport

Handling up to 450 take-offs/day, Runway West is Frankfurt Airport’s busiest runway. Over 50% of the aircraft taking off from the airport uses Runway West, and a point worth noting is that this German airport is one of the busiest in Europe. In 2016, Frankfurt Airport handled nearly 61 million passengers, surpassed by Schiphol in Amsterdam and Charles de Gaulle in Paris, Europe’s third and second busiest airports respectively. Meanwhile London’s Heathrow remained Europe’s busiest airport

The International Road Federation has introduced a landmark Global Credential Programme for Road Safety Audit Team Leaders, recognising the essential role of Road Safety Audits to drive change in safe road design practices. Preventive risk assessment measures, such as a road safety audit or inspection, carried out on new and existing roads offer a well-charted and cost-effective pathway to reducing road traffic injury risk. Yet, those countries with the fastest growth in motorisation and road construction

X-Cone is a new traffic cone management system offering a higher level of safety for workers and maximum efficiency for contractors. Austrian-made X-Cone is a truck-mounted system that can manage the setting out and collection of cones from the flatbed of any 3.5tonne vehicle. It does not matter if the cones are straight or laying on the road, the X-cone can still manage the work quickly, safely and reliably, according to the manufacturer. For setting out standard cones, the driver can decide the distance b

How best is it possible to assess the state of concrete in a road pavement, bridge deck or tunnel wall? One of the most reliable ways is to take a core of concrete from the structure to analyse and test in the laboratory. One downside to this method is that doing the test creates weak points in the structure that must then be repaired. Another is that the frequency of such cores cannot be too great – so it is possible that some problem areas will be missed. New technologies from the world of geospatial eng

Mexico’s highway infrastructure plays a key role in the country’s economy, carrying around 55% of its freight and 98% of its passenger traffic. To meet this demand, the network has 377,660km of roads in all. This is split between the 49,652km federal highway network, the 83,982km of state roads, 169.429km of rural roads and 74,596km of access roads. mHowever, although the federal road network manages to connect a large part of the country's strategic points, some stretches already present problems with satu

The outlook is generally stable for business conditions and credit quality for toll roads worldwide, according to the latest survey from ratings agency S&P Global.The exception is the US where the overall outlook is “positive”, noted the report S&P Global Ratings' 2017. The 21-page report considers broad economic and industry-specific trends. It looks at economic conditions, demographic trends and geopolitical risks that affect the movement of people and goods. “We expect stable or improving, but still frag

Excavators, wheeled loaders and ADTs have all seen improvements for this year. New developments in earthmoving machines continue to help improve working efficiency for contractors. The excavator market is the largest single segment of the construction machine sector, with competition being tough between the major players, and a steady stream of new models coming to market. Doosan has launched the new Stage IV compliant DX225LC-5 crawler excavator, which is said to offer high performance, fuel efficiency, r

The demand for road construction material research and testing services in Kenya is expected to soar. The East African country is going through a construction boom, despite policy and financial challenges facing public institutions overseeing the research and testing operations in the transport industry. “Kenya is going through a construction boom and so is the demand for construction material testing services,” said Juma Ali Madzitsa, Geotechnical Lab Supervisor at SGS Kenya, a subsidiary of Swiss based in

Safety remains paramount but crosswalks can also be colourful and fun. The increasing popularity of colourful crosswalks is exercising the creativity of municipalities around Europe. An example is the use of DecoMark preformed thermoplastic markings in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The art collective Opperclaes, working with urbanism agency Street Makers, designed an artwork-style crosswalk on the Westblaak area of Rotterdam. The Westblaak is a busy street in the city centre and connects Churchill Square with the

Aidan Conway, founder of Thermal Road Repairs, the UK manufacture of paver-mounted pavement heaters, explains how the latest version operates. The equipment, which allows asphalt to be laid seamlessly, eliminates joints from the outset. The latest version of the paver-mounted pavement heater from Thermal Road Repairs includes start-stop technology. This allows the computerised equipment to operate independently while synchronising with the paver. In TRR’s original system this was a manual process, explains

With an estimated value of €8 trillion, the road infrastructure is probably the European Union’s largest single asset. It accounts for 83% of passenger journeys and more than 70% of freight movement. Despite this importance, global investment in roads - especially maintenance - has fallen, said Christophe Nicodeme, European Road Federation secretary general. There are grave consequences, noted Nicodeme in his opening keynote address to the recent Study and Information Days gathering, an annual event for mem

Huesker, an earthworks and foundation designer for roads and pavements, has posted a short video explaining “interaction flexibility”, a new term for geogrid-reinforced structures. Interaction flexibility is an important technical term, as important as tensile strength and tensile stiffness, to secure the quality of a geogrid reinforced construction, explains the engineering team at Huesker which has its head office in Gescher, Germany.

Maintenance, Modernisation, Adaptation of Roads and Streets for Tomorrow’s Mobility – these are the key themes for the upcoming Pavement Preservation and Recycling Summit (PPRS) in Nice, France, March 26-28 next year. Meeting the mobility challenges is more essential than ever in a rapidly changing global context. Speakers at the event, to take place at the Nice Acropolis, will include Peter Schmitz (Germany), Shigeru Kikukawa (Japan) and David Winter (US).

Uruguay’s road development programme will help deliver economic growth for the future - Gordon Feller reports. Uruguay is embarking on a new nationwide programme to rehabilitate 890km of roads, and the government intends to improve an additional 260km of dangerous highways and roads. This three-year programme aims to reduce traffic accidents, in part thanks to a US$70 million loan recently authorised by the World Bank’s board of directors. The new operation uses a special financing instrument known as “Prog