ROADEX-IMPROVING LOW TRAFFIC VOLUME ROAD CONDITION MANAGEMENT IN THE NORTHERN PERIPHERY AREA

In 1998 the road districts of Lapland in Finland, Northern Region in Sweden, Troms County in Norway, and the Highlands in Scotland initiated a technical, trans-national collaborative project named ROADEX. The aim of this collaboration was, through the exchange of experience, to identify the best practice strategies and develop procedures for dealing with common challenges associated with the maintenance of low traffic volume road networks in sparsely populated northern regions. The Roadex project was partly financed by an EU (ERDF, Article 10) funded Northern Periphery Program. ROADEX was divided into two sub-projects: Sub project A dealt with road condition management issues; and sub project B studied winter maintenance problems common to the partner road districts. The focus of the ROADEX sub project A (SPA) was on the low traffic volume roads of the partner districts. One of the sub project's special interests was the use of traffic restrictions in the partner districts and techniques to improve bearing capacity of these roads. This paper presents the results of the project, a comparison study of each road district's current policies and techniques in addressing the issues, and also summarizes some the results of the phase II field tests, which focused on the standard and best practice structures as well as testing the different kinds of special structures utilized in the road districts. The Roadex project identified a few common major structural problems: drainage of roads located on transversely sloping ground, permanent deformation due to freeze-thaw cycles, poor quality materials, and road sections resting on peat. The results of the Roadex subproject "Road Condition management" show that each country has emphasized slightly different strategies and techniques when trying to resolve bearing capacity problems in their low traffic volume road network. A significant problem for low traffic volume road condition management, shared by all partner districts, is that almost all the structural maintenance funds and resources are allocated to main roads at the expense of medium and low traffic volume roads. As a result, the performance of main roads has been improving over the last few years, while the state of low traffic volume roads has become worse. Another aspect gaining publicity and placing pressure on road districts has been that, due to increasing logistical demands, the industries using the lower class networks for their transportation routes have increased their complaints regarding permanent or temporary load restrictions and poor quality road networks.