[N] Roads in Norway • Veier i Norge

[Maxx☢Power]

Originally Posted by Chris1491

Norway is very mountainous. I think you may be happy to even reach 90km/h on many stretches. Although speed limits on motorways are low. They better raise them to 120km/h.

There's been talk about raising the speed limits on some new motorways. I think the reason motorways are still limited to 90 or 100 km/h is because people aren't used to real (extra-urban) motorways and so the normal speed limits have applied there as well. Norway only has two standard speed limits, for urban roads (80) and country roads (50), while most other countries also have one for motorways. I remember when I was a kid and we drove in Sweden how exciting it was to see speed limits with three digits. The roads of course had a much better quality (and the terrain was much easier to build in) to support these limits.

[ChrisZwolle]

http://nexus.fizyka.amu.edu.pl/digit...-07..Norwegia/

Very cool photo's done by some Polish guy, so all credits go to him.
(taken from the Polish subforum on SSC).

[GuyFromMoss]

It's a shame that there aren't more photos of Norwegian motorways online. Some of them is really top class!

[igorlan]

Originally Posted by GuyFromMoss

It's a shame that there aren't more photos of Norwegian motorways online. Some of them is really top class!

I'll try to take some in October, though I'll fly there but certainly I'll have an access to the car

P.S. I used to take a ferry from Moss to Horten, my family lives in Tonsberg

[GuyFromMoss]

WHAT?

I currently live in Tønsberg. Weird!

[ChrisZwolle]

Yeah, you guys are almost family

[igorlan]

Originally Posted by GuyFromMoss

WHAT?

I currently live in Tønsberg. Weird!

I'll be in Tønsberg from the 4th until 8th of October

[ElviS77]

Originally Posted by Chris1491

There is a road to the Nordkapp yes. But don't expect motorway-like roads. The roads are very quiet, Norway is large and has only a population of 4.3 million. Especially north of Trondheim.

But the usual road from Europe to the Nordkapp is through Sweden and Finland, because that's shorter.

We are 4.6 million, actually... But 40% of those live within an hour's drive from Oslo, and more than 50% within two hours. Puts thing into perspective when you know that the distance Oslo-Rome is SHORTER than Oslo-Kirkenes (at the Russian border)... However, this has not yet resulted in a proper motorway network around Oslo and the other urban areas or a reasonable 2-lane main road system throughout the rest of the country. In fact, secondary national roads may be as good as E roads and other main roads (but they may also be in a terrible state...).

I think there are four main reasons for this: 1. The political aspect already mentioned by someone else. 2. The lack of a national strategy: in fact, up to the 90s, all Norwegian "national" roads, including E roads, were for all intents an purposes county roads, everything went through the counties. 3. The counties have been competing for funds, and thus, arguments like "last year, the Oslo region got more than us, therefore we should get more than them next year" were considered valid. 4. Even main roads have generally been made as inprovements of older, rural roads instead of making brand new roads. The same stretch of road, then, might well have been improved two, three or even four times since WWII, and the current road will still be worse than the similar one built in Sweden 40 years ago...

[ElviS77]

Here are some articles from an mc magazine with quality pictures of Norwegian roads. The first is from a regional road an hour's drive north of Oslo:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_hurdal.htm
A quiet road through hills and forests - national route 180. Another quiet road just round the corner is the 240:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_brandbu.htm
A more spectacular road is this, in the vicinity of Stavanger. Not a national road, but a tourist attraction nevertheless:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_lysebotn.htm
A mix of old and new regional highways is found around one of the deepest lakes in Europe, the Tinnsjø. This is the 37 and the 364:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_tinnsjo.htm
The 51 will take you through high mountains, all the way up to 1389 m. Not much for North/South Americans or even central Europeans, but quite extreme up here:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_valdresflya.htm
Another example of a typical rural road is the 255:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_espedal.htm
Spectacular nature and roads is available along the 63, both in Geiranger and along Trollstigen:
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_geiranger.htm
http://www.mcjournalen.no/ruter/rute_trollstigen.htm

For some reason I couldn't simply paste pictures, but I hope you'll enjoy some of these. I'll dig up some more later.

[ElviS77]

Here's the entrance of the world's longest road tunnel, Lærdalstunnelen:
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilde:Laerdalstunnelen.jpg

[ElviS77]

More Wikipedia stuff, this a suspension bridge on the 13 outside Stavanger on the southwestern coast:
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilde:L...fra_Uburen.jpg
Another bridge, much further north. On the 17 outside Sandnessjøen in Nordland county (and yes, "Nordland" means virtually what you would expect, even though it's not the northernmost county):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...2006-07-02.JPG
Oslo's Ring 3 (aka rv 150 - but not signposted as that):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...evaal_oslo.jpg
A tolling station on the E6 just south of Oslo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...s%C3%B8_E6.JPG
E6 in Nordland:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...%B8mmernes.jpg
New E18 under construction, approx 50 kms southeast of Oslo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...kim_Norway.JPG
Norway's highest mountain pass is found on the 55, here a (rather blurred) picture of the climb on the western side, where the road starts at sea level and ends at an elevation of 1440 m:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tagr%C3%B8.jpg
Almost as far north you can drive in Europe. The E69 south of the North Cape:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...d_Mageroya.jpg
Ferries are common in Norway. This picture is from the 70s, but the situation is much the same today:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...62-1988%29.jpg

Hope you'll enjoy these as well, I'll see if I can find some more...

[Jeroen669]

Very nice pictures! Keep up the good work.

[DanielFigFoz]

Norway's Highways are beautiful, congratulaisons Norway!

[ElviS77]

By popular demand

I found these on the Norwegian national road organisation's home page:

A few pictures from the western part of Oslo, on the quite busy rv 168. A tunnel is planned to ease the congestion:
http://www.vegvesen.no/region_ost/pr...kryssvest3.htm
One of the largest construction sites in Norway is in central Oslo. An immersed tunnel is being built to link two existing tunnels on the E18 in order to get traffic away from Oslo's seafront and the new opera. Here's a map and some images:
http://www.vegvesen.no/cs/Satellite?...FPage%2FVPside
One of many problems on Norway's highways... tractors. These are from the heavily trafficed E6 in Gudbrandsdalen approx 200 kms north of Oslo:
http://www.vegvesen.no/cs/BlobServer...r=image%2Fjpeg
http://www.vegvesen.no/cs/BlobServer...r=image%2Fjpeg
http://www.vegvesen.no/cs/BlobServer...r=image%2Fjpeg
http://www.vegvesen.no/cs/BlobServer...r=image%2Fjpeg
There are plans to improve the E6 on the abovementioned stretch, but it is at least 8-10 years in the future. Parts of the E16 northwest of Oslo, however, is already under construction. Here are some images of how it will be:
http://www.vegvesen.no/region_ost/pr...es/b1_del2.htm
This page includes a nice picture of one of Norway's older expressways, the E18 outside Larvik, 120 kms southwest of Oslo. It is overdue to be (and going to be) replaced by a motorway:
http://www.vegvesen.no/cs/Satellite?...FPage%2FVPside

For some reason, the road authorities focus almost exclusively on projects being built or planned, but there are some interesting samples here. For the truly interested, their web site, www.vegvesen.no is worth a try. There is an English version, but most of it is in Norwegian.

[ElviS77]

There is actually a "beautiful road award" in Norway... Here are the best two in 2006, the first from the northwestern part of the country, the second from central Oslo (click arrows to see more):
http://www.vegvesen.no/vakreveger/20...SVV-712608.htm
http://www.vegvesen.no/vakreveger/20...gnerplass1.htm

[ElviS77]

Eventually I found what I was really looking for - the web page for the national tourist roads. It's full of more touristy pictures (and of course in Norwegian), but if you click a bit back and forth, you'll find some good stuff. To begin with, here are shots from the spectacular Atlanterhavsveien, rv 64:

http://www.turistveg.no/modules/modu...Id=85&lang=nor

Enjoy!

[Pavlov's Dog]

This one front-page news from Aftenposten, Norway's newspaper of record.

Norwegian highway-building lags rest of Europe
Norway, despite its vast oil wealth, has been extremely slow to improve its roads and build safer, multi-lane highways. Startling new statistics were unveiled Monday, just after another weekend of deadly head-on collisions on heavily trafficked two-lane highways.

Two people were killed on the busy E-18 highway Sunday afternoon, when their car crashed head-on into a truck near Larvik. The fatal collision closed the highway for hours, and occurred at almost the same spot as another deadly crash last week.

Newspaper Aftenposten revealed statistics in its Monday edition documenting the lack of so-called "Class A" multi-lane highways in Norway. While Sweden has 1,740 kilometers of such roads, Norway has just 281 kilometers. Denmark, meanwhile, can boast 1,024 kilometers and Finland 700 kilometers.

Even poorer countries like Portugal have built 972 kilometers of multi-lane highways in the past six years, according to Knut Boge, a highway expert at Akershus College (Høyskolen i Akershus). He was presenting a detailed report on Norwegian roadbuilding, or lack thereof, at a seminar in Oslo on Monday.

Norway's mountains and jutted coastline have long been portrayed as hindrances to highway building in the country. Boge suggests other factors are at work.

Authorities in Sweden, Finland and Denmark have made "transport infrastructure" a priority since the 1950s, Boge told Aftenposten. Roadbuilding has been viewed as a means of securing national business competitiveness, he said, while Norwegian authorities "have been less concerned with this."

He noted that Norway is saving the majority of its oil and gas wealth overseas, through its massive pension fund. "Swedish, Danish and Finnish authorities, without such wealth, have made investment at home a priority, not least in transport infrastructure," Boge said. "They traditionally have seen a need for roads, taken the initiative to build them and then gradually paid for them through tax revenues."

In Norway, he said, state authorities since the 1800s have made roads mostly the responsibility of motorists, townships and counties. Last year, he noted, local and user contributions to roadbuilding made up roughly half of the total amount spent.

Norwegian politicians also fund projects that can help them secure reelection, not necessarily the projects that can build the most roads for the money and enhance safety.

[ElviS77]

The Aftenposten article is very much to the point. The only transport infrastructure ever prioritised up here, is airports. A joke from Northern Norway illustrates the point:

"Finally, we have an excellent airport with direct links to the rest of the country."

"Great, but how are we going to get to the airport? Do we have to swim?"

[GuyFromMoss]

I agree that there are way to few Norwegian motorways, but in 2009 you can drive on Motorway all the way from Oslo to Tønsberg and Oslo to the Swedish border. So it is getting somewhat better!

[wyqtor]

Originally Posted by GuyFromMoss

I agree that there are way to few Norwegian motorways, but in 2009 you can drive on Motorway all the way from Oslo to Tønsberg and Oslo to the Swedish border. So it is getting somewhat better!

That's very good news! Keep building'em, so that my dream of visiting the Lofoten and Finnmark will be more feasible! (I live far away, in Romania!)