Cutting back on road spending may not be a wise thing to do

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In an article today, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet revealed that Statens Vegvesen (or the Norwegian Public Road Administration in English), which oversees the planning, construction and operation of the national and county road networks, is going to make major cuts to their budget, thus halting or severely delaying major infrastructure projects.

To invest or not to invest

Although this may not have much impact and/or increase supply chain disruptions, it should be clear that improving roads standards is not just a traffic safety issue (which the article makes a big point of), but is also a major contributor towards reducing transportation costs and improving overall supply chain quality.

Transportation networks and roads in particular, are the main backbone of modern society, especially in Norway, which lacks the vast rail network that is seen in many European countries. Here, road transport IS the major component in moving goods and people from A to B. Both the sender, the recipient, the freight hauler, or society at large, experience additional costs when goods or people cannot reach their destinations in time or in space, a fact often overlooked by the authorities in charge of building the infrastructure.

It should hence be paramount to increase, rather than cut back on road spending, and as already mentioned, this is not just a traffic safety issue, it is a simply a question of reliability, as one of my previous articles points out.

Simply cutting back on road spending in today’s transport-dependent society is not a good idea, and there are many reasons for that. I have mine.