HIGHWAY PERFORMANCE MONITORING

This paper looks at the UK national network of arterial roads and attempts to predict whether or not the network is capable of continuing to function efficiently and, if not, whether preventive treatment is possible. Questions are posed about performance and whether enough is done to monitor performance so that answers will be available when required. The performance of the network is considered in two parts: operational performance (journey time, driver comfort, safety, environmental impact) and structural performance (dynamic loading imposed by traffic and extent of maintenance operations required). Six sets of inventory records are said to be the primary essentials to establish a performance monitoring system. These are: road layout and status; pavement structure; traffic accidents; condition and maintenance. It is pointed out that much of this data is held on computer but there is no common referencing system to inter-relate the data in a meaningful way. (TRRL)