ROUGHNESS EVALUATION OF JORDAN HIGHWAY NETWORK

Road roughness is defined as an expression of irregularities in the longitudinal profile of pavement surface that adversely affects the ride quality of a vehicle thus causing discomfort to road users. In this research the ARRB Roughometer III was used to measure the roughness of all the primary and secondary highways in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This is the first time such a study was performed on a national scale. To verify the accuracy of the selected roughometer measuring device, two 500 m sections were surveyed manually using high accuracy level machine and were also surveyed using Roughometer III. Both methods gave very close results for both sections. Coded roughness level maps of the whole road network were generated. A total of 5820 lane km's were surveyed and analysed. After analysing the survey results, it was found that 70 per cent of the surveyed roads were classified as "Excellent" to "Very good", while 20 per cent were classified as "Fair", 8 per cent were in "Poor" condition, and just 2 per cent of the surveyed network was in "Bad" condition. Since about one third of Jordan national highway network is in Fair, Poor and Bad conditions it is recommended that serious actions and maintenance plans should be taken to improve road conditions in Jordan. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E220164.