Vegagerðin

Vegagerðin (The Icelandic Road Administration), previously known as Vegagerð ríkisins for many decades, is a state run institution in Iceland whose purpose is to construct and maintain roads and infrastructure (land and sea) in rural areas and between urban areas. It belongs to the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Local Government and is the legal owner of the roads and has the authority to execute construction of infrastructures on demand from the ministry.

History

Until the 20th century

Until the 18th century there were no official roads in Iceland, only paths and barely visible tracks which people followed, with the help of piles of rocks, for a few kilometers in either direction. In the 19th century, when fishing villages began to spring up on shores and sandbanks, infrastructure between farms and villages began to improve. As fishermen's camps became villages, with homes and workshops, they also became important trading posts for the farms around them. Farmers traveled to the villages with their raw materials and traded these for foreign wares, mostly Danish. This was, of course, not a new thing in Iceland. These places had long been sites for Danish tradesmen but as these trading posts became villages, communication and infrastructure were bound to improve due to increased traffic. In the 19th century, horse carriages became more common among farmers and by the beginning of the 20th century carriage trail tracks had formed from every village to the countryside.

Early 20th century - 1960

In the early 20th century a few automobiles had come to Iceland and streets had been formed in the largest towns. This called for roads between places and the old the government called for the old horse tracks to be converted into gravel roads. In 1918 the Icelandic government established the office of Vegamálastjóri(Director of Roads) and Vitamálastjóri(Director of Lighthouses). The latter was an officer overseeing lighthouses and sea transportation and the office of Vegamálastjóri was the predecessor of the Vegagerð Ríkisins institution which was formed few years later and is what now is called Vegagerðin. The history of road construction in Iceland can be divided into two eras; pre-1960 and post-1960. Before 1960 the main concern of the government was to build road access to all populated areas in Iceland and to all farms. This was a great task and with a low level budget, the roads were made with huge human workforce and they were bumpy and small. The terrain was also very challenging for the road makers for it is often rough and most places in the Eastern and Western Fjords are surrounded by dominating cliff mountains and mulls.

1960 - present day

Iceland became very wealthy after World War II via the Marshall Plan and in the 1950s and 1960s gigantic progress was made in Icelandic infrastructure. In 1960 the task of giving all populated areas road access was announced to be finished and the next step was to improve these wretched roads and build bridges, tunnel and introducing asphalt. At the time, Vegagerðin was a very large organization and workplace with lots of workers and equipment. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the huge wave of privatization rode Iceland and Western Europe, private contractors became more common in the field of road construction both in urban and rural areas. Vegagerðin downsized its labour workforce and began to rely more and more on private contractors when making new roads and infrastructural constructions.

Today Vegagerðin has no road making workers or equipment and the actual work has been completely privatized. Therefore, in the field of making the road, Vegagerðin is the middleman between the contractors and the government and does the paying. Vegagerðin (meaning road-makers) who at first was the actual road makers is now just a road administration and the workers are mostly clerks, working in offices, doing measuring, planning and tendering.

Road administration areas

Vegagerðin has its headquarters in the capital, Reykjavík, but its activity in the countryside is controlled from outposts in various towns and the land is divided into four administrative divisions. Those are South (Suðursvæði), Southwest (Suðvestursvæði), Northwest (Norðvestursvæði) and Northeast (Norðaustursvæði). Those are again all divided into two service areas except for the South area which is only one service area for it is so small. That is because it includes the capital Reykjavík, which has many roads. The service area is where the maintenance department of each service facility (which are in various towns and villages) can maintain the road, signs, tunnel and so on.

See also

Ministry of Communications (Iceland)

External links

• The Roads Administration homepage