04-04-2017, 12:05 PM
Preserving and maintaining each type of road, road, structures as close as possible in its original state built or improved later and the operation of road facilities and services to provide satisfactory and safe transportation, is called road maintenance.
The maintenance function includes several;
1. Surface Maintenance
2. Drainage and road maintenance
3. Shoulder and approaches to maintenance
4. Snow and ice control
5. Maintenance of bridges
6. Transit service
Road maintenance is closely related to the quality of construction of the original road.
Insufficient pavement or base thickness or improper construction of these elements soon results in costly patches or surface repair.
Shoulder care becomes a serious problem where narrow lanes force the heavy vehicle to travel with a set of wheels off the pavement.
Poorly designed drainage facilities, erosion or deposition of materials and costly cleaning operations or other corrective measures.
Sharp trenches and steep slopes require manual maintenance compared to the cheaper maintenance of the flatter trench and soil by the machine.
In a snowy country, inadequate location of extremely low landfills and narrow cuts do not leave room for snow storage, creating extremely difficult snow removal problems.
Road maintenance involves coordinating a wide range of seemingly unrelated activities. In practice, in order to achieve a good level of effective maintenance, it is essential that the different aspects of the work are seamlessly integrated. The task of the Highway Maintenance Engineer is to maintain a road network within the available budgets. This is hampered by the inadequate levels of road construction and the increase in traffic volumes and axle loads combined with declining budgets and the expectation of further cuts in public spending. This is noticeable both in rural areas where the intensification and diversification of agricultural production has resulted in lesser pavement minimum roadways which have to accommodate relatively large traffic volumes and more particularly commercial vehicles which can scarcely fit into The road and in urban areas Areas where the growth of cities has incorporated areas served by secondary roads that now carry large volumes of traffic.