Abstract

As noted in Chapter 1, agriculture, business, commerce, and communications all depend heavily on low-volume roads. The roads must be well maintained or these functions will suffer. Trips to schools, shops, and hospitals all depend on well-maintained roads [14.1]. In addition, an efficiently managed road network is a requirement for successful trading countries. Vast quantities of agricultural, mining, and manufacturing products are carried by trucks on roads, and the expectation of users is that the roads will be maintained to cope with the inevitable deterioration. Further, there is the expectation that any disruption to service will be minimal during maintenance operations.