Infrastructure management in winter is exceptionally challenging. The Finnish Transport Agency maintains the routes available for traffic and transport throughout the year.

Winter navigation
 
Ensuring smooth winter navigation is one of the key tasks of the Finnish Transport Agency. Winter navigation includes ordering icebreaking services and the authority's decisions associated with winter navigation. The collaboration on winter navigation with Sweden is being developed on a continuous basis. Read more about winter navigation

Snow ploughing

In terms of wintertime maintenance of roads, the first process is to plough the snow, followed by de-icing. The busiest roads take priority in terms of ploughing. The target is that on heavily trafficked roads and pedestrian and bicycle lanes the snow should not exceed a couple of centimetres in depth. After snow stops falling, it will be removed from the main roads within a couple of hours and from pedestrian and bicycle lanes within four hours, at the latest. Roads with a lower traffic volume are permitted to have ten centimetres of snow. These should be cleared of snow within six hours.

De-icing 

Weather services allow anticipation of road surface freezing. On heavily trafficked roads, de-icing is based on salting; other roads are gritted.
De-icing measures on heavily trafficked main roads and associated pedestrian and bicycle lanes must be implemented within a couple of hours. The corresponding target for heavily trafficked roads of a lower class is four hours, while gritting may take a while longer on roads with infrequent traffic. Read more about de-icing  

Frost heaving is a problem on gravel roads in spring and, to a lesser extent, also in autumn.

Both surface and ground heaving can take place on the roads. Usually, the frost heaving starts in late March and ends by Midsummer. On roads affected by ground heaving, weight restrictions are usually imposed by mid-April. Particularly during warm and wet autumns, surface heaving is possible, and weight restrictions may have to be imposed. Read more about frost heaving