PERFORMANCE BASED MAINTENANCE STRATEGY FOR RURAL ROADS IN UTTARANCHAL

Abstract

An efficient road transport system is seen by most countries as an essential pre-condition for economic development, and considerable resources are devoted to road construction and improvements. Road network are, by their nature, spread over a wide geographic area, and their condition is changing continuously as a result of the effects of traffic, climate and environmental conditions. The effect on this of maintenance interventions is complex, and is often difficult to predict, particularly over the longer term. Total road length in India is about 3.3 million km out of which 2.7 million km comes in rural roads category. The poor condition and inadequate coverage of the rural road network is a major constraint to rural development and poverty alleviation. The lack of roads means that an estimated 20-30 percent of the agricultural, horticultural and forest product gets wasted because of inability to transport the product materials to marketing and processing centers. The major maintenance activities for low volume roads have been elaborated in Rural Road Manual IRC: SP-20 as-maintenance of shoulders, drainage and structures. Maintenance of surface defects and renewals and rehabilitations which are on subjective basis without any economic analysis basis and based upon the past experience of field Engineers. In this study an attempt is made to find maintenance strategy based on performance indices. For performance evaluation two parameters are used i.e. Pavement Condition Index (PCI) and Present Serviceability Index (PSI). Economic analysis i.e. Optimum Maintenance Alternatives - for Haridwar district is analyzed by Highway Development & Management System (HDM-4). For prioritization of road network for maintenance, Maintenance Priority Indices (MPI) is generated. MPI is based on two factors i.e. Road Condition Index (RCI) and Road User Factor (RUF).