A Rational Strategy for Maintenance of Low Volume Road Network

Abstract

Low volume roads deteriorates fast due to lack of timely maintenance, leading to higher vehicle operating costs, increasing number of accidents, etc. Once these roads start to deteriorate; they deteriorate rapidly and require more resources for effective maintenance. Thus, providing appropriate maintenance treatment at appropriate time, the rate of deterioration can be deferred to a great extent and this will reduce the maintenance cost of huge low volume road network in developing countries like India. Prioritization of maintenance activities depends on several factors such as functional condition, structural condition and importance of sections in the road network. However, a critical review of the literature indicated that no such comprehensive methodology is available to prioritize maintenance activities for a low volume road network. Thus, the main objective of this study is to develop a strategy to select the most appropriate activities to be carried out at different sections considering their priority for maintenance based on importance, conditions of road section, etc. In this study, a two stage maintenance strategy is proposed. Stage I consist of a strategy to determine maintenance priority of low volume road section and stage II consist of a strategy to determine priority of maintenance activities to be carried out on identified low volume road sections. The strategy proposes that first sections which are more critical for maintenance needs to be selected in stage-I. Further, the sections identified in stage I needs to be evaluated in more detailed so that the various maintenance activities to be carried out on these sections can be prioritized. Thus, the proposed strategy is less time consuming simple and cost effective and can be executed with minimal data which can be obtained easily and economically from each section of a low volume roads network.