Highways and Their Maintenance Methods

Highways and Their Maintenance Methods

Author Name : Shoeb Ali, Mr. Vishal Rawat

ABSTRACT

Roads, and means of transport, make a crucial contribution to economic development and growth and bring important social benefits. Poorly maintained roads constrain mobility, significantly raise vehicle operating costs, increase accident rates and their associated human and property costs, and aggravate isolation, poverty, poor health, and illiteracy in rural communities. This Note highlights the economic and social importance of regular road maintenance and recommends ways to achieve sustainable road maintenance with scarce public resources. Its audience is not specialists but rather people who need to understand road maintenance enough to discharge their responsibilities effectively: government policy-makers, mayors, ministry staff, new World Bank staff and staff in sectors such as rural development and social funds. The reference section offers sources providing more detailedinformation.

The maintenance of roads involves the co- ordination of a wide range of seemingly unrelated activities. In practice to achieve a good standard of effective maintenance it is essential that different aspects of the work should integrate smoothly. The task facing the Engineer in Road Maintenance is to maintain a network of roads within available budgets. This is made difficult by the amounts of road which are built to inadequate standards and the increase in both the volumes of traffic and in the axle loadings combined with decreasing budgets and the expectation of further cuts in public expenditure. This is noticeable both in rural areas where the intensification and diversification of agricultural production has resulted in minor roads of minimal pavement construction having to accommodate relatively large volumes of traffic and more particularly commercial vehicles which on occasion can barely fit onto the road, and in urban areas where the growth of towns and cities has incorporated areas serviced by minor roads now carrying heavy volumes of traffic. Of these the majority of National Primary and some national Secondary roads have been realigned to modern design standards.