official translation

official translation official translation REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA LAW ON ROADS 11 May 1995, No.I-891 Vilnius Chapter

1. General Provisions Article
2. This Law on motorways (hereinafter referred to as "Law on Roads") shall establish the legal basis for development, maintenance and use of roads of the Republic of Lithuania. Article
3. A road is an engineering structure designated for the traffic of vehicles of set measurements and mass, and for pedestrians. The road shall consist of construction limits, carriageway, shoulders, median, ditches at feet of slopes, cross-roads, bus stops, pedestrian and bicycle paths, road constructions, and traffic regulation means. The road complex shall comprise the road, premises, constructions and equipment of enterprises engaged in road building and maintenance, constructions and equipment of transport services, emergency lines, vegetation and the land occupied by these objects, as well as the land of sanitary protection zone. Article
4. According to their significance, roads shall be divided into roads of state and local significance. Roads of state significance shall be divided into trunk roads, regional and local roads. Lithuanian roads for international communication shall be considered as trunk roads. Regional roads shall be roads which connect trunk roads, centres of administrative units and big cities or which connect with each other. Local roads shall be roads which connect regional roads, cities, villages, other objects, and which are not considered regional roads. Roads of local significance shall be such roads which connect local roads, villages, as well as other roads which are used for local communication. Article
5. According to their parameters, roads shall be divided into technical categories following the design standards of Lithuanian roads. Article
6. According to the form of ownership, roads shall be state-owned, local authority-owned or private. Article
7. The Ministry of Transport shall perform state management functions concerning design, building, repair and maintenance of state and local roads. The Ministry of Transport shall be responsible for maintenance of roads of state significance, as well as for maintenance of streets by which trunk roads and regional roads go through cities (except on the territories of a city municipality) and towns, as well as of carriageways and constructions. Local authorities shall be responsible for maintenance of roads of local significance. Owners of private roads shall be responsible for maintenance of their roads. Railway organisations shall be responsible for maintenance of crossings. Article
8. Roads shall be named after the names of those residential areas in which they begin and end. When necessary there may be names of intermediate residential areas or other objects in the road name. Numbers shall be assigned to trunk roads and regional roads. Roads of state significance shall be registered by the Ministry of Transport, and the list of them shall be approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. The Ministry of Transport shall collect, analyse and store data on roads of state significance, and manage these data banks. It shall provide free of charge necessary data to state cadastres, registers, classifiers and data banks, and shall have the right to obtain free of charge necessary information from them. Local authorities shall register and approve lists of roads of local significance. Chapter
9. Road Construction and Maintenance Article
10. To design and construct roads may only those economic entities which have a permit (licence), issued by the Ministry of Transport, to engage in such activities. Roads shall be designed according to the approved territorial planning documents, and shall be built in accordance with the approved designs. Designs of road building and maintenance shall be prepared in compliance with laws of the Republic of Lithuania, standards and rules of Lithuanian road building. Article
11. Land for road construction, building of structures, establishing of production facilities, as well as for quarries of building materials and soil shall be acquired in the procedure established by laws and other legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania. Article
12. The minimum width of a strip of land over which a road is built or is under construction (further referred to as right of way) shall be established as follows: 1) trunk roads and 1st category roads - 39 metres; 2) 2nd category roads - 28 metres; 3) 3rd category roads - 22 metres; 4) 4th category roads - 19 metres; and 5) 5th category roads - 18 metres. If a built road or road under construction in separate sections (in cuts, embankments) does not fit in a right of way of the set width, the limits of such right of way shall be established not closer than a metre from the edges of the feet of the embankment or outer edges of the cut. Article
13. A sanitary protection zone shall be established to both sides of the road edge. Its width, taking into account a category of the road and traffic volume, shall be as follows: 1) for highways and 1st category roads or when traffic volume is more than 7 000 vehicles daily (further - v/d) - 159 metres each; 2) for 2nd category roads or when traffic volume is more than 3 000 v/d - 70 metres each; 3) for 3rd category roads or when traffic volume is more than 700 v/d; 4) for 4th and 5th category roads or when traffic volume is more than 250 v/d; and 5) in other cases - a minimum width of a sanitary protection zone shall be 10 metres each. The land of the sanitary protection zone of a road shall be state or private. This land shall be used in the procedure prescribed by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania. Article
14. It shall be allowed to construct roads, build only constructions of the road complex, as well as structures which muffle sound and reduce the volume of pollutants, to lay engineering communications and biotransport routes, to landscape, to establish and develop service facilities in the sanitary protection zone of roads of state significance, taking into consideration the perspectives of road development and requirements for road safety, according to designs which are drawn up and agreed on in the prescribed manner. It shall be allowed to build temporal snow-fences in the sanitary protection zone of a road during autumn and winter time. Article
15. Roads shall be constructed, repaired and given for utilisation in compliance with appropriate state road standards and rules. Article
16. The aim of road maintenance shall be to create proper, safe and rational traffic conditions. Road owners shall take care of road maintenance and organising of traffic. Technical means of traffic regulation shall be placed upon receiving a permit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This law and other legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania shall regulate road maintenance. Article
17. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Transport and local authorities shall control how the requirement for road safety are being observed. Article
18. Road design, construction and maintenance shall be financed in the procedure established by laws of the Republic of Lithuania. Chapter
19. Road Use Article
20. All legal and natural persons shall have the right to use roads in compliance with this Law and road maintenance rules approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and taking into consideration lawful requirements of road owners. Article
21. Road traffic may be temporarily restrained or held up upon co-ordinating it in the established manner and receiving a consent of the road owner. The road owner may temporarily restrain or hold up traffic due to accidents, natural calamities, spring thaw when it causes damage to the road, during road maintenance operations or when a threat to road safety is posed. When road traffic or people's safety, nature or public order are endangered, the police shall have the right to restrain or ban, without the consent of road owners, road traffic or pedestrian flow, and works carried out on roads or along them. Information about road closing shall be announced through the mass media. Expenses incurred due to the indicated traffic restrictions shall not be compensated to traffic users. Article
22. Tolls shall be collected only for use of the roads which are constructed on the basis of concession. Tolls may be charged for the use of private roads only upon receiving a permit of the local authority. Article
23. In order to carry freight of exceeded weight limits, a permit of a road owner must be obtained. In order to carry freight, the permitted measurements thereof are exceeded, it shall be co-ordinated with a road owner and a permit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs shall be obtained. When carrying dangerous freight, the effective procedure for carriage of this kind of freight must be followed. Freight charge shall be collected in the prescribed manner for the carriage of this kind of freight by roads. Article
24. Overground or underground engineering communications built in the road or its sanitary protection zone shall be maintained by their owners. When constructing or renovating these communications, it shall be necessary to obtain a consent of the road or land owner, and if while carrying out works, the traffic is obstructed, it shall be necessary to co- ordinate this with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Article
25. The person who has caused a traffic obstruction or has noticed such an obstruction, must remove it, and when it is impossible to do so - warn traffic users about it (to mark an obstruction) and inform the police or road owners. Chapter
26. Rights and Responsibility of Road Owners and Traffic Users Article
27. Road owners and officers responsible for road maintenance shall have the right: 1) to stop vehicles the owners of which violate the requirements of this Law or road maintenance rules and to prohibit them from driving further; 2) to check whether permitted weight and measurements of vehicles are not exceeded, and if they are and there is no permit - to prohibit them from driving further; 3) to remove vehicles or freight which are left on the road and so hinder road safety at the expense of their owners or drivers; and 4) to remove advertising signs, engineering communications, to close down cross-roads or slip roads which are constructed without permission, at the expense of subjects who constructed them, if, after a warning, they do not remove or close down them themselves. Article
28. The officers responsible for road maintenance shall have the right to draw up a report concerning administrative violations of law to individuals who have violated road maintenance rules and to fine them in the procedure established by the Code of Administrative Violations of Law. Article
29. Persons, responsible for road maintenance, who have violated the requirements of road maintenance rules or who have not taken measures to timely ban or restrain traffic in separate road sections when the use of them endangers road safety or road resistance, shall be liable according to effective laws. Persons who maintain roads shall be discharged from liability if an accident has taken place through road users' or other persons' fault, due to natural calamity or a sudden change in atmospheric conditions. Article
30. Road users and other persons shall be liable for violations of this Law, road traffic rules and road maintenance rules in accordance with laws of the Republic of Lithuania. Article
31. If international agreements of the Republic of Lithuania establish rules other than those provided for in this Law, the rules established by international agreements shall apply. I promulgate this Law enacted by the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC ALGIRDAS BRAZAUSKAS