DEVELOPMENT OF LOW COST PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR RURAL ROADS

Abstract

The Third Road Development Plan (1981-2001) has envisaged the development of rural roads under `Minimum Needs Programme'. According to this plan, rural roads have been classified as Other District Roads (ODR's) and Village Roads (VR's). At present the total. length of rural roads is 13.46 lac Km. It suggests by 2001, the road network should connect or provide access to all the villages in the country. Still we are very far behind our target (21.89 lac km) and a large length (8.43 lac km) of rural roads need to be constructed. As per the projection of Ministry of Surface Transport (MOST), Govt. of India, it will need around Rs. 400 billion to construct all weather roads for linking all villages by roads which is a very huge amount. Besides this, the large road network built at -great expense is being under maintained & more heavily used than expected. As per the projection, the total cost of maintenance of rural roads by 2001 as per 1983 prices is estimated to be Rs. 2189 crores which is 70% of total maintenance cost required for all categories of roads. Hence for the maximum utilization of funds, a simplified approach has to be developed for management of rural roads which should be scientific & cost-effective. The approach of `Pavement Management System' (PMS) of rural roads can be a vital tool serving the purpose as it consists of comprehensive co-ordinated set of activities associated with planning, design, construction, maintenance, evaluation and research of pavements. The study aims at developing a simplified, low cost `Pavement Management System' (PMS) for rural roads. Under this study, six roads (i.e. 2 ODR's and 4 VR's) have been selected in the Districts of Muzaffarnagar & Haridwar in U.P. state. Out of the six roads, two roads are unpaved roads (one WBM road & one Earthen road) & the other four are paved roads.