Road maintenance

Taxonomy and description

Terminology

The following description treats road maintenance as concerned with existing vehicular carriageways, footways and on-road cycle lanes, and their associated structures, markings and obstacles (such as lighting; road markings; vegetation), so it does not directly consider road construction, traffic calming; road widening or reconfiguration; or off-road cycle routes or footways (except where they cross a carriageway; or where signs or lighting impact on a footway).
It is helpful to describe four broad categories of road maintenance, recognising that there will be overlap between them:

• Programmes of inspection and repair; 
• Responsive repair: that is repairs made following reports of damage;
• Treatment of surfaces to mitigate the effects of weather and temperature on the carriageway;
• Replacing materials constituting the carriageway.

Description

Decisions about road maintenance have can wide reaching effects including impacts on vehicle speed; on safety for occupants of vehicles; on safety for other road users including pedestrians and cyclists, on accessibility, on pollution and noise; on fuel consumption, and on flood risks related to drainage (Gould et al. 2013).  Maintenance and repair can have beneficial impacts for safety, however where maintenance results in higher vehicular speed it may be a factor in increasing risks of death and serious injury from collisions (see Noland 2003).  Higher traffic speeds can inhibit walking and cycling, and create fear for those who through choice or necessity continue to walk and cycle (Pooley et al. 2013).

Major costs of maintenance include financial costs, congestion as work is carried out, environmental impacts of construction materials and associated with maintenance itself  (Parkman et al. 2012; Gosse and Smith 2013; Gschosser et al. 2014); impacts on safety; burdens to residents and businesses living alongside a road; and congestion while repairs are conducted (Gould et al. 2013).
There is unlikely to be a linear relationship between levels of maintenance and costs. While it is the case that all maintenance will have associated costs, financial and other costs will vary according to factors such as timing of identification and response to damage; materials chosen and the externalities associated with those materials; and the planning and communication about road closures (Gould et al. 2013); financial costs may also vary according to the extent to which decisions on maintenance are sufficient to limit insurance claims from those adversely affected by road conditions (Atkinson 1997).