INVESTIGATING EFFICIENT TECHNIQUES FOR ROAD MAINTENANCE AND REHABILITATION IN THE CASE STUDY OF ALEMGENA TO WOLAITA SODO ROAD CORRIDOR

Abstract

The road condition from Alemgena to Wolaita Sodo corridor is fair to the poor condition which is highly deteriorated. Therefore, the corridor needs high maintenance, and rehabilitation works were needed. But Ethiopian Road Authority (ERA) was working the least cost routine maintenance which leads to high road user costs. Since the application for the economic evaluation of Road agency and road user costs for decision making is very limited, and the consideration in an economic evaluation of road user costs has been neglected most of the time in life cycle cost analysis. The primary goal of this research is to evaluate the least total transportation cost by applying different maintenance standards and based on the result to select the least total transportation cost of pavement maintenance standard for pavement preservation. The Highway Development and Management (HDM-4) software was employed to calculate the costs by using localized data. The data such as the road network characteristics, the road users’ information, and maintenance standards for candidate road sections were defined, and finally, Economic analysis by using section analysis was taken. To achieve the objective of the study descriptive type of research is used to indicate current situations. The qualitative data was used to show the selected conditions of the road network and traffic conditions and quantitative data was used on the numerical values involved in HDM-4 software. From the finding of the study Annual Road agency and users cost streams, it can be concluded that the implementation of Project case alternative 1(routine maintenance plus surface dressing and overlay) maintenance work standards was expense least total transportation cost in each road sections.