Construction of roadways including asphalt and other kinds of roads
Concerning the fact that civil work on transportation especially in a wide and mountainous country such as Iran is costly projects, the roads which mostly were caravan roads, used to remain their previous situation up to 1st world war. But then government put the construction of new roadways in to action 82 years ago and we can call this real time the initial point of roads construction.
Up to this time the roads construction and maintenance were funded by toll collections, which the upper limit of it was 30000 toman. In Apr30, 1922 General Bureau of roads was set up in Ministry of Public Benefit- ministry with was in charge of roads network construction and maintenance in the country. In the year 1926 the government suggested to put an end to toll collection and the fifth parliament passed this law so they replaced the old method with tax policy according which they used to put tax on gross weight of a portion of exports and imports.
Based on this policy the annual revenue of roads increased up to 1500000 toman. They also assigned duties for General Bureau concerning roads reconstruction and maintenance. Roads were divided in to several routes with 10 distinctions afterwards, each of them under the control of separated responsible. In the year 1926, they introduced a codified plan by the name of “Proposal Project of Roads Construction in side the country” related to roads civil works. The process was estimated to be done in 9 years with the allocated budget of 45 million toman. The lengths of anticipated roads which were included in this project were equal to 17021 km. These roads were classified in to three categories as 1st, 2nd and 3rd class roadways. We can name this project as the 1st project of roads civil works in Iran.
According to a law which was approved by parliament in Mar17,1930 this Bureau changed to an in depended ministry by the name “ Ministry of Roads”, as a result of taking the roads progress in to consideration.
According to the approved law the so-called ministry was in charge of roads construction and maintenance, navigation developing and organizing, and taking care of port activities. Then in 1937 this ministry changed in to the “Ministry of Roads” which was responsible for roads and railways construction and maintenance and organizing navigations and ports activities. From the beginning of 2nd world war our country coped with weird ups and downs in about 20 years and roads civil works started during these years. The developments and reforms on Ministry of Roads were compatible with other progressive infrastructural developments in other official departments.
In1977 this ministry was renamed again and its new name which was “Ministry of Roads and Transportation” brought new greater responsibilities and funds to this ministry.
Ministry of Roads and Transportation is seeking these goals:
-provision a coherent and comprehensive plan for transportation inside the country.
-provision of development, equipment and maintenance concerning infrastructural utilities, based on development circumstances of economic, social, civic and national defense.
This means that the main objective of this ministry includes construction of connective accesses (roadways, railways, seaways and airways), providing transportation equipments and presenting efficient laws in order to get benefit from these facilities.

Construction and Maintenance of Roads:
At the beginning of Pahlavi dynasty the length of roads didn’t exceed 3900.This record reached up to 24000 km during kinghood of Raza Shah. At the beginning of white revolution this length increased up to 35000 km. The operations of the 1st four civil programs increased the length of Iran roads up to 42000 km and after 5th program we had three distinguished categories roads such as highways, main ways and local distributor roads with the length of 26000 km for each them. At present ministry of Roads and Transportation is in charge of maintenance 107009 km of roads which have been featured in the chart of appendix.
These duties are taking in to consideration through three headquarters which are responsible for periodic and frequent maintenance and twenty nine general bureaus of provinces in charge of current and emergency maintenance. The periodic and frequent maintenance which are funded from national and province projects are carried out by private sector.
Ministry of Roads and Transportation has taken care of road’s resurfacing after islamic revolution (during1972-1994) as featured in appendix. The resurfacing process of 3561 km of the roads has been done through 23 plans and 32 projects.
According to 1st five-year plan, 500 bridges are supposed to be repaired among which 255 of them are over with the repairing process .Concerning hazardous segments 1128 segments have been identified so far and 300 of these so-call spots are planned to be improved during 1st plan and it is predicted that 233 of them will be removed by the end of this plan.

Objectives and basic assignments
A: Objectives:

- Construction roads of the country including roadways, railways, seaways and airways.
- Managing roads affairs, drawing comprehensive transportation policies, developing, equipping, improving and maintaining infrastructural utilities according to circumstances of economic, social, civic and national defense .