Penalties Due to Deferred Maintenance in Network Level Pavement Management

Availability of budget and the choice of different preventive maintenance and rehabilitation treatments are to be considered in the selection of the cost-effective treatments depending upon the condition of the pavement during the service life. This paper presents an approach for the selection of cost-effective maintenance and rehabilitation treatments for a road network in India under varying budget scenarios for a planning period of ten years. The road network is about 840 km consists of State Highways with varying geometry, pavement composition and traffic and serviceability conditions. The maintenance cost required to keep the road network at the desired performance level for multi-year period duly considering budgetary constraints, agency cost, vehicle operation and road user cost and the effectiveness of the treatments in terms of benefits per unit investment is worked out. The relationship between age and pavement serviceability considering the choice of different treatments and the year of implementation of the treatment is studied. The benefits are found to reduce by about 34% on an average when the needed annual budget is reduced by 7%. The benefits in terms of area under the pavement serviceability curve reduced by 40% on an average, due to deferred maintenance and the annual cost escalation during the deferment period was found to be approximately 25%. The benefits are computed in terms of net present value for various maintenance and rehabilitation treatments, for varying traffic levels.