Road Structures

In a surprise move the Turkish authorities have now cancelled the tender process for the construction of the third Bosphorus Bridge and the Kuzey Marmara highway. The process was cancelled as there were no bidders.

Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon has inaugurated the new Baluarte Bridge, which crosses the Baluarte River in the Sierra Madre mountain range in the north of the country. This 1.12km long bridge is 403m high at its central point over the steeply sloping ravine it spans, making it the highest cable-stayed structure in the world.

The tender has now been published by the Israel National Roads Company for the upgrade to Road No 85, a project expected to cost US$134.2 million (500 million NIS). The work includes widening and building an interchange on Roads No 85, which along with improvements to Road No 65 forms a key component of the Netivei Israel plan.

Contractor Bechtel has worked with Network Rail to complete a major road bridge upgrade in the UK. A construction team worked 104 hours consecutively to replace the bridge, located at Reading Station.

Austrian construction firm STRABAG has won a major road contract from Poland’s General Directorate for National Roads and Highways (GDDKiA). The deal is for the construction of a 40km section of the S8 Expressway between Walichnowy and Sieradz Poùudnie, some 240km to the south west of capital Warsaw.

Japanese consultants are planning to realign a Kenyan bypass, as Shem Oirere reports. Japanese consultants are resolving an engineering quagmire involving a 17.5km bypass in Kenya's Coast region. The new design realigning the bypass is underway by Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) consultants. The road is an alternative link from the hinterland to the south coast and to the proposed Dongo Kundu Port. The 23m-wide bypass would also serve to reduce traffic congestion across the Likoni Channel t

Work is now underway once more on a new bridge link connecting Laos with Thailand. The US$44 million project is being funded equally by the governments of both countries and work is expected to be complete in June 2013.

Infrastructure construction in China is booming as never before, but sealing the world’s longest immersed tunnel is a technically complex engineering project. The impressive Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau fixed link project in China includes an immersed tunnel with a record-breaking length of almost 7km. In 2009 construction began on a project to link the island of Hong Kong with Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai. The link will be one of the region’s most technically complex engineering projects ever.

London faces a nail-biting race against the clock to fix Hammersmith Flyover in time for the 2012 Olympics. The flyover, which carries 90 vehicles a day on the A4, the road between central London and the West, including Heathrow airport, has been closed since 23 December after serious defects were found in the 50-year-old structure.

Some $1.6 billion in funding is being provided from US federal funds to states and territories across the nation to cover the costs of repairing roads and bridges damaged by natural disasters. Funding from the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Emergency Relief Programme was provided by the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012.