Troms og Finnmark County has the owner responsibility for 4500 km county roads, of which approx. 12% of the road network are roads with a total road width that is less than 5 metres. In practice this means that two large vehicles do not have room to meet. Nationwide, this makes up approx. 10% of county roads. In addition much of the road network has horizontal and vertical curvature with blind corners, so it can be difficult for vehicles to see coming traffic. These ‘bottlenecks’ are on open air roads, in tunnels, and on narrow bridges.

The gain of developing innovation systems that improve accessibility and that increase traffic safety will be great for the users of the county road network, value creation for industries and the environment. As 10% of the county road network in Norway has a width that in practice means that two large vehicles do not have room to meet, the expectation is that there is a large national, and also international market potential.

The procurement is be made as a pre-commercial procurement. Pre-commercial procurement is a method for the procurement of research and development services in accordance with the exemption provision in the regulations, section 2-5 (the R&D exemption).

The pre-commercial procurement starts as an idea contest where the market is invited to solve a concrete challenge.  The innovation contest is scheduled to be held October 2022 – June 2024.