2013 - India - Optimum Maintenance and Rehabilitation Strategies for Multi-Lane Highways

Pavements which are left to deteriorate without timely maintenance treatments
are likely to require major rehabilitation and reconstruction much sooner than those which
are properly maintained. In developing countries like India, where the traffic growth and axle
loading is growing at logarithmic scale, deterioration of highways is very fast. This increased
traffic demands for multilane highways with proper maintenance time to time. During the
process of road network maintenance and rehabilitation, road authorities strive to select an
optimum maintenance strategy from a number of alternatives. This selection may be obtained
only through a realistic approach. An economically acceptable maintenance strategy may
be selected among a number of maintenance alternatives. It can be done by calculating and
comparing the various maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) alternatives with the help of
Highway Development and Management tool (HDM-4). This available technology and tool
that makes implementing an effective pavement rehabilitation program feasible, is globally
accepted. This paper specifically addresses flexible pavement, including the multilane highways
from northern region of India. Study involves the data collection and selecting the optimum
M&R strategy by using programme analysis component of HDM-4 for selected road sections.
It is expected that the information contained in this paper would be useful for developing
optimum maintenance management strategy for multilane highways.