Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper presents a study that assesses the effectiveness of road network maintenance based on historical costs and road roughness progression. The study is intended to measure the effectiveness of routine maintenance and a combination of routine and periodic maintenance. The study analysis is based on a database developed from the State of Victoria consisting of 898 low volume sealed road sections. A new effectiveness measure is introduced based whether road sections remain in the same state condition or move to next worst condition based on a predefined roughness value. Analysis shows that under routine maintenance (without periodic maintenance), the probability of road sections remaining in the same condition exhibit a declining tendency from good to worst state of conditions in comparison with a result when the maintenance budget is spent on a combination of routine and periodic maintenance. Following this, a stochastic prediction model is developed by converting the results into transition probability matrices. These results demonstrate a new and important rationale for road authorities to optimize the selection of appropriate maintenance measures.