This report discusses questions concerning wear on forest roads. The purpose of the work is to investigate if the wear on the roads will decrease when the speed limit gets lower for the trucks that transport the wood. A normal forest road, class B, was used in the study. In total 5000 m3f timber was transported on the road. Data about the road was measured with a profilograph car before and after the timber transport.

Single vehicle accidents are one of the most common types of accidents that occur on the Swedish road network. Depending on the design of the road, the presence of a crash barrier and embankment on the roadside, the outcome of a roadside collision can lead to serious injuries and even deaths.The aim of this project is to investigate the possibility of improving road safety by designing the optimal roadside area based on the results of a life cycle cost analysis (LCC).The questions that have been answered during the duration of this project are:1) Describe the current technical solutions for roadside area design and the various barrier types used in Sweden.2) Complete an existing mathematical model that has been developed by Hawzheen Karim, for calculating life-cycle costs for various roadside areas.3) Calculate and compare the life cycle costs for the side area with a barrier and without a barrier.By performing an analysis of the documentation on the current guidelines and rules for shaping the roadside, was it possible to describe the current technical solutions for the formation the roadside as well as the current roadside barriers in use today. A mathematical model for calculating the life cycle costs of different barrier types had already been developed by Hawzheen Karim. This model was supplemented so that it could calculate life-cycle costs of the roadside region with and without a barrier. After the model was completed, an analysis was performed to obtain life-cycle costs of a roadside with and without a barrier.The result showed that there is a clear relationship between the slope inclination, fill height, and the rate at which the costs rise.

Sweden have 419 000 km road in the country and about half of these roads is forestroads. The forest road net most important mission is to make it possible to deliver wood from the forest to the industries. With a raw material that is spread over a large area the road network is important. Each year has the forest road network been extended with about 1 700 km new roads. To decide if a new road is to be built different forest road cost estimation models has been used.

This thesis focuses on the driver?s experience of the road and its surroundings. ?The view from the road? takes place every day and a high-quality ?road experience? is therefore a question of importance. Since cars made their breakthrough in the 1920-30, the approach to ?the driver experience? has varied notably.

The use of gabions means a reduced amount of filling material in the road section and a more narrow construction. Also the use of limestone cement columns can be reduced. All together this results in lower costs. The columns stand for about 55% of the total costs for the road. If gabions are used you can reduce the total costs with over 10%..

The forest industry is one of the most important industry branches in Sweden. Since the demand of high precision wood deliveries has increased, the demand on a well constructed forest road net also has increased. A good road net gives the wood-supplier competition advantages and also increases its service level towards its customers, lumber-mills and pulp-mills. In some parts of Norrbotten, the road net is still insufficient and not yet built out enough, and that is why it is important to know how to act and where to improve the road net in these areas. The purpose of this thesis was to create a work-model for long term road planning in areas with no road net or a not yet complete road net. The model has been created in an ArcGis environment, where a long chain of tools has been tied together with the program ?Model builder?.

New method for measuring road quality- A statisticalstudy of the relationship between road quality andsocioeconomic development A new tool with implications for road maintenance has the potential to yield statistical data for road quality in a large number of regions. This thesis investigates the possibility to develop a method, from this data, for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development.The thesis is essentially divided into two parts. Part one looks to qualitatively establish the link between socioeconomic development and road quality and the second part focuses on how to develop a method for evaluating the effects of road quality on socioeconomic development. A method was devised using categorical data and a multinomial regression model. This method provides a comprehensive overview of the complex relationship between a variety of different variables.

Transportation constitutes a large part of the forest industry's raw material costs. Transport also contributes a significant proportion of the carbon dioxide emissions. In order to reduce both the cost and environmental impact different types of decision support are required. These, in turn, require extensive information about the road network and correct information on road path selection and transport distances. In the development of national road data base for forestry (SNVDB) a road selection application has been included.

A Road project?s frame is built up of a decision- and consultation process, where the results of the preparatory studies are being discussed. The aim with a consultation process is that all theopinions and knowledge from the operators' will be taken into count in the basis of information, that is needed in order to the different involved operators' to take a decision.The aim of the essay was to investigate how the decision- and consultation process for a road project, the E4 section between Uppsala Läby, turned out. The aim is also to bring up how theprocess could have been done more correctly. The study was carried out through a qualitative method with an analysis of materials from the National Road Administration's archives, the associated Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and through interviews of the different operators.My theoretical basis has been a Stakeholder Analysis and its principles, and theory about different executions of social planning.The result showed that the decision- and consultation process has been bursting in democracy and consideration taking of the different operators' opinions, has been poor from the developer?s, in this case the National Road Administration's, side.

This report is written in cooperation with the Swedish National Road Administration South-Eastern Region in Jönköping. The report is a result of the evaluation to give an answer to the question about how well the function contract has been carried out on the E4 in Östergötlands and Jönköpings län. The evaluation is divided in two hard parameters and one soft.The Swedish National Road Administration is interested in knowing how the standard on the road have been changed during the functions period, which is the reason why the first hard parameter is considering road standard. To evaluate the standard there have been a comparison of values from measures taken every year on the current road stretch. The second hard parameter considers economy.

The purpose of this Master Thesis has been to investigate the possibilities for a new type of noise reduction solution that could decrease the negative effects resulting from larger traffic roads. The idea has been to construct a noise barrier with a roof ? like a tunnel placed on a road. The choice of material has been focused on transparent materials in order to lower visual intrusion and barrier effects. This project idea is called the Noise tunnel.After having investigated the current offer of noise solutions, it has been concluded that these solutions rarely provide a sufficient level of noise reduction ? at least not when government regulations of acceptable noise levels are applied.

The increased travelling of today makes nodes along travelling routes more and more important. This is very much the case of petrol stations. They constitute important nodes in the road network, filling up thirsty fuel tanks and hungry stomachs, guiding road users and providing vehicle-services. In this thesis the role of the petrol station for road users was investigated in order to find out if the petrol station was a potential hot spot. We performed an ethnographic field study at a petrol station and found that a great number of visitor activities took place at the petrol station.

Msc in Logistics and Transport Management.

China is considered as one of the world?s fastest growing economies and the future of China looks promising. Even though the Chinese market attracts many new foreign companies to enter the market there are entry barriers which companies may encounter as obstacles, which will aggravate the market entry in China. As a result companies loose business opportunities and therefore it is of great importance for Swedish companies, which are planning a Chinese market entry, to identify which entry barriers that are considered to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome.The purpose of the thesis is to examine which entry barriers that are generally considered to be the most difficult obstacles for Swedish companies to overcome when entering Chinese markets and to rank the five most difficult entry barriers to overcome.Information about these entry barriers have been gathered from Swedish companies, which have carried out successful market entries in the Chinese markets, through an e-mail questionnaire.The result generally shows that the most difficult entry barriers to overcome in China were: bureaucracy, property laws, language, cultural differences and difficulties finding local partners. The ranking of the entry barriers? result shows that bureaucracy is the most difficult obstacle to overcome, followed by cultural differences, language, relations and access to distribution channels.We conclude that companies experience different difficulties overcoming these entry barriers, which depends on the companies? size, years in China, markets and if the entry barriers were considered controllable or uncontrollable.

The basis of road investments is to minimize the transportation cost. The forest industry wants roundwood to be available during the whole year. One way of determine which road to invest in is to do a cost/benefit calculation. SCA Forest lacks a uniform approach to determine the utility of a road investment. The goal of this report is to describe how the organization works today and find areas of improvement. The data collection was done through interviews.