DEVELOPMENT OF PAVEMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR URBAN ROADS

Abstract

The urban roads constitute about 6.7 percent of the total length of roads in India. The roads particularly in metropolitan cities and state capitals carry large volume of traffic as well as commuters. The economic losses due to poor road condition amounts to a huge sum inspite of their small mileage. Funds are not sufficient to maintain all the roads to the desired level of service and in such a situation Pavement Management System (PMS) provides relevant logistics for prioritisation of roads for maintenance in consonance with the availability of funds. In the present study, twelve road sections, located in scattered form, have been identified from all over Delhi for the development of a 'prototype' PMS for urban roads. The data on inventory, functional evaluation, structural evaluation and traffic have been collected for all twelve-road sections. The study deals with the second generation investments related to pavements i.e. investments needed through the life-time of a pavement following the opening of a road. The prevailing norms for maintenance of roads in urban areas, recommended by Ministry of Surface Transport (MOST) have been critically analyzed. A new condition-responsive cum scheduled maintenance policy has been proposed. Life-Cycle costing has been done based on the both maintenance policies. The Highway Design and Maintenance Model (HDM- Ill), duly adapted to Indian conditions, has been used for Life-Cycle costing. It may be well appreciated that for all the twelve road sections the total transportation cost with proposed new maintenance policy, is coming less in comparison to the existing maintenance policy. The output of the study provide the prioritisation of twelve road segments, to be taken up for maintenance in year 1998, based on Net Present Value (NPV) method of Financial / Economic analysis.. Besides prioritisation, the PMS provides the availability of timely information with respect to pavement condition, maintenance, rehabilitation, reconstruction actions and cost for each road section. ( iv ) Based on the present study, it is recommended that elaborate field data should be collected from roads of different cities of India, for different seasons for a period of 5-6 years for developing a pavement deterioration model for urban roads. The PMS data could be further integrated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for facilitating quicker and precise decision making.