The RTS project in the East of Iceland will focus on the public transportations in the municipality of Fjardabyggd and the biggest town of the municipality of Fljotsdalsherad, Egilsstadi. There are few main problems that the project has to face logistic being one of it and population density another.

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The low density of this area is a big problem since public transportation tends to by very costly where there are many towns involved but relatively few people in each town. The municipality of Fjardabyggd consists of six small towns scattered evenly around an area of 1170km2. The towns of Fjardabyggd are in six different fjords and are separated by mountains which are up to 1200 meters high. The main road leading thought the municipality goes through two tunnels and a mountain road, Oddskard, which is about 630 meters above sea level and happens to lead to the main hospital in the region, the main road to Mjoifjordur is not passable during the winter. The airport that serves the region is in Egilsstadir which is about 30km from the main town of Fjardabyggd called Reydarfjordur. Already the current situation of public transportation in Fjardabyggd and Egilsstadir has been analysed and there are several different public transportations running without any consideration to each other, there are school buses, company buses and special licence buses. This makes one of the main considerations in the east of Iceland synchronisation to make the whole system more economical and environmentally friendly.

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To work towards this goal the main associates in the project in Iceland are the Municipality of Fjardabyggd, which is responsible for school buses, and the Icelandic Road administration, which is responsible for other public transportations. By getting those partners together we hope that some solutions that serve all partners could be implemented. The biggest company in the east of Iceland, Alcoa-Fjardaral, an aluminium smelter, has its own bus service and has shown interested in taking part in the project. Another problem that seems to be quite big is a lack of awareness. There is certain service already in place but people seem reluctant to use it for some reason, might be a lack of information or price. Whatever the reason is it should be interesting to find out how other areas involved in the project are handling similar circumstances. How to get people to use public transportation?

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New ways and ideas of how to tackle these problems could be a fruit of transnational partnership and cooperation. Is there any way to utilize public transportations better and in more economic way in rural areas? That’s what we hope to find out.

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Project Manager Asta Sigurjonsdottir + 354 471 2545 firstname@austur.is

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