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Reinventing the major road infrastructures, giving them more value and making them give us more services is now possible. In this article we will offer a new vision of current road infrastructures. We seek to reinvent them by integrating innovative solutions in order to transform them into sources of local power generation while also equipping them with systems that transform them into smart infrastructures resulting in services for the citizens and in improvements in the quality of life of society as a whole. The article has been divided into two parts: in the first one we will introduce basic concepts, which in turn will be the fundamental principles for understanding the solutions that will be explained in the second part. Solutions that through their installation in the infrastructures will make the most of sunlight and vehicle traffic to generate clean energy locally, which can then be used to power street lighting, road signs, variable information panels, charge electrical vehicles, etc. Through the implementation of these solutions we seek to provide answers to the increase in energy demands while complying with and attaining Horizon 2020, the European strategy for intelligent, sustainable and inclusive growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban road design has traditionally been based on a hierarchical classification of roads according to the volume and type of motor traffic they are to carry and in conjunction with geometric parameters (cross-section, curve radius, etc.) and speed parameters for each resulting type. Such classifications and design methods are today clearly obsolete given the varied requirements of our urban environment and the need to reduce vehicle traffic in cities, whose negative impacts are well known. The study sets out this process, outlines the new framework that should apply to the road network, points out the insurmountable difficulties of adapting the traditional classification to this new framework and looks forward to criteria for designing and structuring urban roads with which the new and complex challenges of more sustai-nable cities and mobility may be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years ago, six new toll highways were inaugurated in Madrid. These projects, which began to be studied in 1976, have been analyzed by the Spanish mass media with different points of view (different projects, construction, opening, technical and economical problems and their bankruptcy). In this article, this journalistic vision will be studied, as well as, its contrast with a professional and technical treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarises research that has been carried out in E.T.S.I. Caminos, Canales y Puertos de Madrid (UPM) into Urban Freight Distribution. An analysis is provided on the current situation of this sector in Spain, more specifically about the legal implications, the economic and environmental problems it causes, as well as feasible solutions, everything from the point of view of Transport Engineering. After that, as an example, the article examines the case of Valdemoro (Madrid). There, it is shown how a change in the layout of reserved parking areas can achieve important improvements on urban traffic, making the zone more efficient and sustainable. The article ends with some conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing development of new traffic monitoring technologies gives rise to a situation with multiple sources of data and multiple algorithms for the estimation of variables that may be of interest, among them information on travel time. This context with data from different sources, all of them imprecise to varying degrees, is the right one for applying data merging techniques. Their objective is to obtain a more reliable and precise merged value than that obtained from any individual estimations by themselves. This article presents a simple data merging methodology for the estimation of travel time on the highway. The proposed method uses data from loop detectors and toll tickets and would be easy to extend to other data sources. Its pilot application on the AP-7 highway has produced promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of new technologies to traffic engineering has allowed the development of Intelligent Transport Systems. ITS improve traffic management and increase road safety optimizing the use of the existing road infrastructure. ITS systems make easy traffic dynamic management. One of most used parameters in traffic management is the Level of Service. Currently, Level of Service are based on the Highways Capacity Manual from Transportation Research Board. However, the proposed model is completely static. Thus, this model is considered suitable for the dimensioning of future road network, but not for dynamic traffic management. This paper presents a new model for the identification of level of service in highways that allows a dynamic traffic management in real time. This model is based on the fundamental relation between speed and occupancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]