A study about the widening and strengthening of existing national highways in India.

The Widening and strengthening of Existing National Highway Development In India has been executed by National Highway Authority of India, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORT&H), Government of India. Existing road condition, traffic volume and composition to predict road deterioration as per the urban and rural road conditions was not so satisfactory in terms of IRI value. The Highway Development & Management (HDM) software simulates total life cycle conditions and costs for an analysis period under a user specified scenario of circumstances. A network economic evaluation is the most challenging use of the model, but the effort is well justified due to the potential savings on transportation costs achieved by comparing various alternatives and performing a budget constraint optimization. The methodology used by the author calls for HDM analysts to first identify the possible road works and then determine which road works to evaluate for each road class as a function of the traffic and other characteristics of the road class. For example, the works selected could be: (i) preventive treatment or surface treatment works for roads in good condition, (ii) surface treatment or asphalt concrete resurfacing works for roads in fair condition, and (iii) strengthening or reconstruction works for road in poor condition. It is important that the selected road works per road class be feasible from a purely technical point of view to produce realistic results.HDM allows for the definition of condition-responsive and scheduled project alternatives, for example, the maintenance schedule can be set up to execute an overlay when roughness reaches 4.0 IRI or execute an overlay every 15 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]