Conference on highway engineering in Africa - Addis Ababa April 1974: road maintenance

Abstract

Road maintenance varies greatly between different authorities in its scope, expenditure and standard of performance. Decisions on maintenance are too often made on subjective judgements and there is an urgent need for better systems for assessing road conditions. Earth and gravel roads are generally classed as unimproved, intermediate and improved or engineered gravel roads. The chief maintenance needs of these roads are discussed and rates of formation of corrugations and gravel-loss given for different countries. To be effective in keeping roads to an acceptable standard, maintenance organisation should be more sophisticated; with better definition of tasks all relevant data could be collected and processed to reveal areas of high and low efficiency. This paper defines the necessary charge heads and categories of expenditure. Approximate costs of different operations in relation to traffic are quoted for different countries and an approach suggested for relating maintenance costs of bituminous roads to numbers of "standard axles".