An Economic Pavement Management Framework for Extremely Budget- and Resource-Constrained Agencies in Canada

Abstract

Regional pavement management agencies often suffer from inadequate resources and technical people to carry out maintenance tasks efficiently. Though funding shortage is an issue for most agencies, regional agencies confront it primarily for various reasons such as the class of the roads managed by them, traffic intensity, the size of service population, and the jurisdiction. Regional agencies generally manage lower functional classes of roads that usually carry smaller traffic. Though low-volume roads (LVRs) take just 20% of the traffic, LVRs include approximately 80% of transportation system mileage. With only 20% of the traffic volume and 80% mileage in transportation, LVRs can barely compete with the return on investment of highways. As a result, regional road networks are always subject to less attention from policymakers. In this context, this research proposes a pavement management framework for the regional agencies which is economical, requires minimum technical expertise, and is easy to implement. This study includes two surveys: The Canada-wide Pavement Management Survey and the Road Users Feedback Survey. The Canada-wide Pavement Management Survey provides an overview of pavement management practices in Canada at the regional level. The concept of Pavement Management System (PMS) score is also developed utilizing the same survey responses. Findings from the Road Users Feedback Survey have been used to understand the feasibility of using road users’ feedbacks in making management decisions. Overall results from these two surveys have been utilized to develop various components of the proposed PMS framework.