Abstract
The functional rural road network has a significant effect on the socio-economic growth of a nation. Newly constructed road pavements deteriorate with time, their regular maintenance will not only keep them functional but also increase their service life. Planning and scheduling of maintenance activities is an important part of any maintenance program for a large network of roads. The present study proposes a maintenance plan for low volume rural roads at network level as well as project level. In the first step of network level planning, the roads in the network are prioritized for pavement maintenance, depending primarily on their pavement condition and traffic volume. In the second step of project level planning, a suitable repair and maintenance technique is selected for each road based on the predominant pavement defects, traffic volume, and climatic conditions. ArcGIS was used to visualize the roads on a map and manage the data collected for each road. The maintenance planning was automated through a tool developed within ArcGIS. Verification of the methodology was done by applying it to a case study of 203 rural roads in the state of Himachal Pradesh in India. The results show that the pavement condition of a road (56.4%) is the most critical factor for prioritizing roads for maintenance. Pavement condition is followed by socio-economic facilities located along the road (26.2%), average daily traffic volume (11.7%), and type of connectivity provided by the road (5.7%). The outcome of the maintenance plan proposed in this study is the priority ranking along with the most suitable repair technique for each road in the network.
Published Version
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