Through previous studies during my education, I have experienced that chemical deicing road salt is a known problem, mainly in southern Sweden. Road salt causes damage to the environment and also damage to vehicles and structures such as bridges, etc. Road salt causes vehicles and steel constructions to rust, leading to increased costs for repairs of damage to structures. Road salt also causes damage to the plants and the economy to suffer, when plant material and soil needs to be replaced. In order to get closer to a solution, I put up three questions.

approaching Boden deals with the approaching of a city, both in a physical sense ? along the road ? and in a spiritual sense ? in mind. The physical encounter with a city is represented by the experience of the road and its surroundings, while the spiritual encounter is represented by the idea of the city that we already have, or will get, in our minds. We have in this degree project approached Boden through a thoroughly analysis of both the entrance roads and the city itself. In this degree project we are looking for ways of how to create characteristic and interesting entrance roads to a city, with Boden as an example. This demands knowledge about the problems involving entrance roads as well as the distinctive features of the city.

This work derives from the question ?What is a beautiful road??. The question is being discussed in interviews with two employees at the Swedish National Road Administration and two former members of the ?Council of environment and beauty? at the Swedish National Road Administration. The interviews are summarized in my own discussion about the concept of ?Beautiful roads?.

During 2006 SNVDB (the national road data base for forestry) is being introduced to Holmen Skog. This data base contains all information about Holmen Skogs road systems. The information will then be used in different kinds of optimisation models which only produce correct and reliable results if the input data are of the adequate quality. Today there are reasons to believe that road data is of various qualities. The forest roads are often in a bad condition and have to be improved before a planned harvest. The cost of maintenance and construction of new roads is a large part of the total harvesting cost.

Assessment of impacts on nature and reindeer husbandry by the considered mountain road between Borgafjäll and Saxnäs- Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institutes method for assessment of damage to heritage assetsThere are plans regarding the building of a new road from Borgafjäll/Båtas to Saxnäs, and two road alternatives have been presented. The road has been localized to an area which is protected as a nature reserve and listed as a Nature 2000 area. This report aims to determine the effects on the Nature 2000 area and reindeer husbandry, and to be a source of knowledge for future environmental impact assessment in that project. In order to assess the impact on nature values and reindeer husbandry a method from the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) has been used. A literature review has been made to prescribe the effects and consequences.

The technical achievements that have occurred in recent years have led to a greater use of the Internet around the world. Today, more and more people are using virtual communities, a place where communication occurs with people who have similar interest. Due to the option of being an anonymous user, the concept of trust plays a big part in how virtual communities are working. It is therefore of interest to investigate how trust develops between users in virtual communities. This report asks the following question:"How is trust formed between users at a virtual community?"A qualitative and netnographical study was conducted to answer the question above.

The objective of this thesis was to develop a method for the planning of road upgrading at Holmen Skog, a Swedish forest company. A critical issue for creating such plans is to identify roads that are suitable to upgrade to a standard that can handle heavy traffic during spring thaw, since spring thaw is a bottle neck for transporting timber. The method was tested in a case study at a district. The work consisted of two parts. The first was to retrieve and prepare geographical data for the roads.

The Swedish Transport Administration has, and manages, a database containing information of the status of road condition on all paved and governmental operated Swedish roads. The purpose of the database is to support the Pavement Management System (PMS). The PMS is used to identify sections of roads where there is a need for treatment, how to allocate resources and to get a general picture of the state of the road network condition. All major treatments should be reported which has not always been done.The road condition is measured using a number of indicators on e.g. the roads unevenness.

The purpose of this thesis is to show how a good approach can be designed, focusing on the southern approach to the Swedish town Vilhelmina. Prior to the car being part of everyday life, the approach was a road where the town showed itself from the very best side. When the amount of traffic increased, so did noise and other disturbances, and as a consequence industrial areas replaced the residential buildnings at the approaches. Today, the pendulum is turning back and in recent years the approach is regarded as a place to introduce the town. The approach is also the place where cars should slow down from the speed of the main road to the speed of the city.

The purpose of this thesis was to create a strategic/tactical road access plan. This was done by designing an analytical method which gives the road manager a template to create long-term road access plans. The analytical method will help to identify and appraise roads to be upgraded and give information when it is time for building new roads. The study method involved developing an analytical method. The method was comprised of five main parts: the harvest plan, analysis of the road network, transport costs, quality and storage costs and finally, identification of investment alternatives.

During its lifetime, a road goes through a number of different stages; pre-study,inquiry of the road, work plan, documenting stage, building stage and operatingstage. The operating stage is the one that takes the longest time and costs themost. Those have a tendency of becoming unnecessarily high because the projectengineers don?t always take the management and maintenance prerequisites intoconditions.To decrease the management and maintenance costs, the Swedish RoadAdministration SouthEast has been in need of a work procedure that makes theroaddesign engineers take the management and maintenance of the road intoconsideration. This shall be achieved by a checklist where the most commondesigns that lead to increased management- and maintenance costs are compiledand listed.Through interviews with project leaders in management, the most commonproblems have been identified, analyzed and summarized under the headlineswinter-road, vegetation, road equipment and road designs.To elucidate the problem from several points of view, interviews wereimplemented with project leaders in investment and roaddesign engineers.

This report was undertaken at the request of the Management and maintenance department of Swedish National Road Authority (Vägverket Region Sydöst) in Jönköping.In 1992, the management and maintenance of Swedish roads were laid out on external constructors. When putting out a tender for the work, the foundation is from a national set of rules which are in constant change. This report is limited to winter road upkeep.The trend in the invitation for tenders is that it is moving from the more conventional executional demands towards the less controlling demands. The downside of functional, less controlling demands is that it is difficult to articulate how to measure them. The order authority therefore has to find ways to make sure to get what has been paid for.In connection to the invitation for tender of winter road upkeep for 2005, the new set of rules, ATB Vinter 2003 was deployed.The main purpose of this thesis is to see which the big changes in the set of rules are and how these changes affect the organisation and activities of the constructor.It is also studied how the changes in execution is perceived by road users and how it affects the possibilities of the constructor to come as a newcomer to a new area of administration.Interviews and examination of sets of rules has led to a list of a number of changes that the constructors feel affect their work in any sense.Views from road users that have come in to the order authority have been scrutinized to see how they have experienced the change.

Nowadays the majority of the thinnings made in Swedish forests are done by machines, harvesters and forwarders. The most common model in thinning with a harvester is strip-road operated thinning and stand-operated thinning with one intermediate passage between the strip-roads. This study is a time study with some quality follow ups on a strip-road operated thinning model, a stand-operated thinning model with one intermediate passage between the strip-roads and a stand-operated thinning model with two intermediate passages between the strip-roads. The machines in the study were a small harvester (Forestline MPM C90) and a medium sized forwarder (Timberjack 1110). The study was made in Litsnäset outside the city of Östersund in Sweden and was made during the autumn 2007. In a lodgepole pine stand six study units (0,6 ha) were thinned with the three different models, two study units per model.

Present master of science thesis has been carried out at the Swedish Road Administration consulting services (Vägverket Konsult) in Karlstad. The purpose of the study is to investigate how well the calculated drawdown of the groundwater table predicts the actual drawdown when the road and railway gates at the studied sites are built. For this purpose the groundwater levels at the three bridges were measured during 6 months. The bridges in question are two railway bridges situated in Ölme and Ulvåker and one road bridge crossing a pedestrian and cycling path in Lidköping.In Ölme the calculated area of influence was smaller than the measured one. It differed up to 30 meters, i.e.

The main purpose with the project has been to approximate the magnitude of the pollution transport from the actual road surfaces and to get an approximation of the possibility to collect the pollutants to reduce the load to the water and improve the water quality.The quantity of pollution transport from the most trafficated roads areas in Örebro city has been calculated. Roads whith a traffic exceeding 10 000 vehicle/day. The study has been done with the calculation tool StormTac. Through analysis of traffic loads and road surface, which together with a different kinds of parameters gives an approximation of the pollutant transport.The calculation has included some metals and other substances in the stormwater and has also included the present of suspended solids. Included the overall study, some smaller areas has also been calculated for the possibility to remove pollutants.The work also includes calculation for three different areas for stormwater treatment.