History of road maintenance
From path maker to road manager
Section 3 of the "Ordinance on the Issuance of Service Instructions for County Roadmakers", issued on April 26, 1890, states
"§ 3
Each rural road-maker is assigned a specific stretch of road, which he must supervise closely at all times, together with all associated objects, namely bridges, railings, walls, culverts, ditches, roadside trees, weir stones and posts, signposts, milestones and boundary markers, and maintain them in as good a condition as possible.
He must report all notable incidents occurring on this route to the road master as soon as possible and, if necessary, obtain higher instructions."
The organizational form of road maintenance was thus clearly regulated.
The main roads of the time were built according to the principle of the famous road builder John Mc Adam and had a drained, load-bearing substructure. The top fine layer served as a wear layer. The road builder had to ensure that the wear layer was maintained, drained and kept clean, and that the road ditches, which ensured the drainage of the road body, functioned properly. A reasonable section of road was handed over to him. In the following paragraphs of the above-mentioned ordinance, professional and disciplinary instructions are given in detail, which determined the employment relationship of the road maker for decades.
Incorrectly conveyed pedagogy has always greatly damaged the reputation of road maintenance and verbally degraded its function to that of a cleaning service for public facilities. However, road maintenance always guaranteed the preservation of the value of high public investments, which demanded expertise and dedication from every employee.
In the past, the roadmaker was provided with an equally modest room to store his modest equipment. In bad weather, he also carried out indoor work, such as straightening materials for enclosures, drainage and the like, as well as maintenance work on tools. In this sense, these shelters or sheds formed work yards for road sections.
With the acquisition of vehicles, machines and superstructures that were able to cover long distances with special operations, the stationing locations of these units took on central importance and the idea of centralized works operations was born. This led to the development of task forces and individual operations that served entire road networks. However, this mobility demanded new organizational and operational structures with requirements that could no longer be met by the service instructions of 1890.
But even after the introduction of modern organizational structures, individual roadmen kept their sections of road and the small rented premises were also retained due to the lack of suitable depots. Over time, certain concentrations were formed, but a clear division into largely independent maintenance districts could not yet be realized.
When this division into the three districts of Oberland, Triesenberg and Unterland was completed, the modern era of Liechtenstein road maintenance began with the construction of the Vaduz maintenance depot in 1964. However, it was to take more than two decades before the Bendern depot was put into operation in the Unterland in 1982 and the reorganization was completed with the opening of the Triesenberg depot in 1987.