Road Maintenance is any activity performed on a road with a view to ensuring that it is able to deliver an expected level of service until it is scheduled to be renewed, replaced or disposed of.
Types of Road Maintenance
- Asphalt Rejuvenation
- Condition Monitoring
- Crack Sealing
- Dead Animal Removal
- Edge Patching
- Heavy Patching
- Herbicide Spraying
- Line Marking
- Pothole Patching
- Road Grading
- Roadside Slashing
- Sealed Road Shoulder Maintenance / Shoulder Resheeting
- Sign Cleaning
- Sprayed Seal Rejuvenation
- Street Sweeping
- Tree Trimming
Some Councils may also class resealing as a maintenance activity, but the majority (?) of Councils class it as capital expenditure.
Legislative Context
Division 3, Section 40 of the Victorian Road Management Act 2004 specifies that Councils have a statutory duty to inspect, maintain and repair public roads for which they are the responsible Road Authority, to the standard specified in their Road Management Plan.
Typical Annual Expenditure
The amount that a Council spends on road maintenance will depend on many factors including the make up & condition of its road network, the climate, the service level provided, and exactly what activities are considered to be road maintenance.
Rural Sealed Roads
In an AssetMates discussion in May 2010 a number of Councils provided per km maintenance expenditure figures for rural sealed roads.
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The small sample above is nowhere near enough data points to make any significant conclusions, but if enough Councils contribute data, plotting expenditure against council population or annual rainfall or some other known variable it is possible that trends will emerge that will help Councils to get a feel for whether or not their expenditure levels are typical.
Studies have shown that road maintenance expenditure on specific roads is strongly related to maintenance expenditure so population density may well be a key variable to consider.