Pavement preservation: an approach to preserve pavements and investments

Traditionally, highway agencies are adopting the corrective or reactive and worst first maintenance approach, in which condition is allowed to deteriorate to fair or poor condition before taking steps to rehabilitate worse first. Such a maintenance is not only a costly and time-consuming activity with associated longer traffic disruptions and inconvenience to users, but is also incapable of managing the existing highway assets in an economical and optimized manner, due to ever shrinking budgets and increased demands and expectations from the traveling public. In recent years, a pavement preservative or proactive maintenance approach based on best first has become an integral part of a Pavement Management System (PMS) abroad, in which a successive series of appropriate low-cost preservation treatments are applied at the right time to the right section when it is still in structurally sound condition to improve conditions and performance; reduce rate of deterioration and aging, thereby increasing service life and serviceability of the without any increase in structural strength, and thus maximizing the economic efficiency of the investment. Integration of both approaches of maintenance, preservative and corrective, into a comprehensive PMS is essential for effective management, planning and programming of maintenance activities, as well as preservation and therefore should be adopted in India on all ODRs, MDRs and SHs, as well as on NHs (>4500 CVD) to satisfy the ever rising public expectations for safety, mobility, quality and performance on the preservation maintenance philosophy in order to preserve the pavements and investments incurred on them for future generations.