Development of Maintenance Program for Main Road Network in Bahrain

Abstract

Nations are spending millions to develop internal and external road networks because they well understand the great effect of this on the social life of people and economy. Considerable attention is given also to maintain and improve the developed network in order to insure its sustainability and the safety of road users. Kingdom of Bahrain has developed a well-designed road Network. All cities, villages, economic centers, touristic monuments and properties are well connected with a road network consisting of 3780 kilometer of asphalted highways, avenues, major roads and internal roads. There are two different budgets allocated by Ministry of finance for the purpose of maintaining the road network. The first one for main routs i.e. highways and avenues and the second one for major and internal roads. These budgets must be utilized over two years in the best possible way considering the size of the networks and its structural condition and needs. The allocated budget is limited with comparison to the length of the existing network and its maintenance requirements, in addition to that the rapid increase in traffic volume and expansion of the network increases the challenge to optimize the utilization of the allocated budget by developing the best possible maintenance program. This study is describing a project was conducted to develop a two-year maintenance program for the main routes i.e. highways and avenues. The aim of the project is to optimize using the available budget by creating a maintenance program that considering the road conditions and budget limitation. This paper represents a case study that will add benefit to the readers in how problems can be solved with least amount of money and encourage thinking out of the box to find effective solutions.