Icelandic Road Administration

Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration

Vegagerðin
Minister of Infrastructure
Agency executive	Bergþóra Þorkelsdóttir[2], director
Website	road.is (in English) vegagerdin.is (in Icelandic)

The Road and Coastal Administration (

). Vegagerðin 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

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 in 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. But roads were needed to connect settlements, and the government called for the old horse tracks to be upgraded to

are surrounded by dominating cliff mountains and headlands.

1960–present

Iceland became very wealthy after World War II via the

independent contractors

became more common in road construction, both in urban and rural areas. Vegagerðin reduced its direct labour workforce and began to rely more and more on private contractors for building roads and other infrastructure.

Today Vegagerðin has no road building workforce or equipment: the work has been completely privatized. Thus Vegagerðin is the intermediary between the contractors and the government. Although the word vegagerðin means "the road-makers", it is now an administrative organisation which employs mainly office staff, doing measuring,

tendering

.

Until 2021, the headquarters of Vegagerðin were in Reykjavík with other sites in Kópavogur and in Hafnarfjörður. In August 2021, all administrative activities were relocated to the new headquarters in Garðabær.^[3]

Road administration areas

Vegagerðin has its headquarters in Garðabær near the capital, Reykjavík, but its activity in the countryside is controlled from outposts in various towns and the country is divided into four administrative divisions. Those are South, Southwest, Northwest and Northeast. Each of these is subdivided into two service areas, except for the Southwest area which covers only a small area. That is because it includes the capital, and has a much denser road network than the other regions. The service area is where the maintenance department of each service facility (which are in various towns and villages) can maintain the road, signs, tunnels etc.

External links

• Official website (in English)
• Official website (in Icelandic)

References