USING RIVER AND LAKE ICE FOR TRANSPORTATION: A Literature Review

Steven Daly
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:11:06 PDT

Ice roads are a common type transportation corridor in regions of the circumpolar north that traverse frozen rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water. This report reviews the existing literature that is relevant to the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of ice roads in the circumpolar north. It begins with a compact review of ice formation in river and lakes with an emphasis on those aspects that are relevant to ice roads: ice cover formation and growth, the various types of ice, ice decay, and breakup. Next it addresses bearing capacity, the ability of the ice cover to support a load. The current approach for determining the bearing capacity combines an approach based on elastic plate theory with a conservative failure criterion and uses empirical coefficients based on observations. An important point here is that selection of a coefficient value is, in effect, selection of a risk level for use of the ice road. The approaches used by Canadian provinces and territories is reviewed along with their approach to the range of risk levels. The construction of ice roads is then described. Ice road construction involves setting the ice road widths, increasing the ice cover thickness, if necessary, through snow clearing and flooding of the ice cover, and installing signage. The hazards that can affect the integrity of the ice road and safe operation of vehicles, and the controls that can be put into place to remediate or prevent the hazards from occurring are then discussed. Finally, an ice road risk management framework is described. The Risk Management Framework allows the operators of the ice road a means of balancing the needs and requirements of the ice road users and the resources available to the operators at an acceptable risk level.