A PLANNED APPROACH TO HIGHWAY MAINTENANCE

This report presents the case for highway maintenance, outlines a scheme for preventive maintenance, comments on work methods, describes the assessment of the economic level of maintenance, and discusses the implementation of the maintenance programme. Ideally, all maintenance should be preventive and designed to take place just before failure could occur. Attempts should be made to forecast when and where repairs will be necessary. To do this, the engineer must have a reasonable amount of traffic data including axle load surveys, soils and materials information and a highway inventory which gives the construction and past history of the routes. Before a budget estimate is made, it is necessary to investigate work methods and to check that the scale of maintenance proposed is appropriate to the need. The special conditions in developing countries are noted. In order to assess the benefits of maintenance, it is necessary to determine changes in vehicle operating costs brought about by relatively small alterations in road conditions due to differing standards of maintenance. A comparison of the results of analyses for various traffic levels will show the best economic course of action.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper appears in "Transport Planning in Developing Countries," which is a publication containing the Proceedings of Seminar U of the Summer Annual Meeting at University of Warwick, England during July, 1975.
• Corporate Authors:

  Planning and Transport Res and Computation Co Ltd

  167 Oxford Street
  London W1R 1AH,   England 
• Authors:
  • Thriscutt, H S
• Publication Date: 1975-7

Media Info

• Features: Figures; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 125-131
• Serial:
  • Publication of: IRCOBI SECRETARIAT
  • Publisher: IRCOBI (International Research Council on the Biokinetics of Impacts)

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Axle load force; Developing countries; Highway maintenance; Inventory; Motor vehicles; Operating costs; Preventive maintenance; Soils; Traffic density
• Subject Areas: Economics; Freight Transportation; Geotechnology; Highways; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00148232
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: P128
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 23 1977 12:00AM