Road Maintenance

Road maintenance has been around longer than modern roads. In the old times, everyone was obligated to maintain roads. Maintaining roads for free with no training was called a natural duty. Fulfilling this natural duty entailed carrying branches or logs to lower spots, filling holes with sand or gravel and maintaining bridges. In winter, roads were marked with fir, pine or juniper branches.

The unpaid natural duty to maintain roads lasted for centuries and was partly abolished in Estonia only in 1928. From this moment, the state started to organise and fund works on the national roads and more significant basic roads. In Estonian road maintenance this marked the beginning of a new era. To maintain gravel roads, the state used graders, bought ploughs and other machinery.

Throughout the Soviet occupation, the focus was always on building new roads. Hence, much less attention was paid to maintenance, compared to the 1930s or nowadays. In the 1950s and 1960s, the most effort was spent on passive snow clearing, which meant planting hundreds of kilometres of fir hedges and setting up snow fences en masse. In the 1970s, the task of snow clearing in the winter was gradually handed over to machines, but summer road maintenance was still overlooked.

The changes began in the 1990s, when Estonia received second-hand road construction machines from Germany, Finland and Sweden as non-repayable assistance. As there were no funds for road construction, attention turned to maintenance. Trimmers, graders and trucks equipped with special technology, received as humanitarian aid, helped improve the appearance of roads quite well. Well-maintained road shoulders became the norm, and in winter snow could be cleared quicker and with better quality.