A road segment is a uniform section of road that is identified separately in an asset register.
Segmentation Rules
Because roads are a network asset and the points at which a segment should start and end are not always obvious it is common to adopt a set of rules for creating road segments.
Queensland Roads Alliance
The Queensland Roads Alliance's Road and Bridge Asset Management Kit suggests that a road segment should have:
- the same surface e.g. 14mm sprayed seal, Asphaltic Concrete or unsealed.
- the same width for the majority of the segment.
- the same pavement age or year of construction.
- similar pavement conditions
- a similar traffic regime
- similar shoulder conditions (i.e. sealed or unsealed)
- 100m to 2km in length in urban areas.
- 500m to 2km in length in rural areas, but possibly up to 5km in length in isolated rural areas with uniform conditions.
Bundaberg Regional Council
- The start and end points of Road Segments should be one of the following:
- intersections
- start of seal
- end of seal
- end of road
- Road segments should break at cross roads, roundabouts & signalised intersections.
- Road segments should break at T-intersections unless a resulting segment would be less than 250 metres long.
- Road segments should break at intersections if the character of the road either side of the break differs as follows:
- Bus Route / Non Bus Route
- Classification (e.g. Local vs Collector)
- Surface (e.g. Sealed vs Unsealed)
- If the whole of an unsealed road segment is sealed and one or both ends are not an intersections, it should be deleted and the length of the neighbouring sealed segment(s) modified accordingly.
Draft Data Standard for Road Management and Investment in Australia and New Zealand
The Austroads Data Standard for Road Management and Investment in Australia and New Zealand (Section 4.2.2) favours the term "link" over "road segment". It defines a link thus - "In a road network, portion of a road (single carriageway) between two junctions or interchanges or intersections. Its basic characteristics are length, vehicle speeds, travel times, and number of lanes."
Issues
How to best segment a roundabout is a particularly thorny issue, that there is possibly no best answer to, but if you think you have the answer please tell us about it here.
Related Pages
Contributors
The following site members have contributed to this page:
External Links & References
- Google Map Maker
- Google Search (Road Segment)
- Google Search (Road Segmentation)