Assessment of Asphalt Road Maintenance Management Practice: In The Case Of Jimma Town

Abstract

Road transport is an important sector of economic activity, especially in developing countries, where it plays an essential role in providing access to health, education, agricultural inputs and extension services. Due to increased and continued traffic crossing, pavements are more easily damaged and distressed. Inadequate maintenance, overloading, bad road design, lack of a road asset management system, delayed maintenance, and scarcity of materials are the primary issues with asphalt road maintenance management. The aim of the study was to examine the asphalt road's maintenance management practices, identify factors that affect asphalt road maintenance management and categorize the approaches to maintaining the asphalt road in Jimma Town. The scope of the research was to assess asphalt road maintenance management practices. The study covered Ten kilometers. According to the assessment, most commonly road failure were caused by so many factors from them bad drainage condition and poor road-use culture were ranked firstly with RII value of 0.788 followed by poor maintenance culture with RII value 0.764 the most common causes of asphalt road failures in the case study area. On asphalt road construction the entrance of water to the other layers of the road leads the surface strength to affected by shrinkage and swelling. And also if the overlapping through centerline of the pavement because of the void that surface become fail so when we saw the result it indicated that asphalt roads faces so many defects because of different factors from those defects on the study area Potholes and Shovels, Longitudinal cracking and Raveling (very porous asphalt) are the most common defects present ranked from first to third respectively with RII values 0.752, 0.748 and 0.712. The factors that affect road maintenance in the case study area were Maintenance Age, Availability of Drainage System and Road Surface Condition ranked from first to third with RII value of 0.796, 0.768 and 0.720 respectively. This indicates that, typically, pavement deteriorates at an ever-increasing rate: at first, very few distresses are present, and pavement stays in relatively good Condition, but as it ages, more distresses develop, with each distress making it easier for subsequent distresses to develop. Also, the quality of the road surface is critical to ensure the safety of drivers and other road users. From the assessed methods, the most commonly performed applicable types in the study area are by removing and replacing at least a portion or all part of the road layer in order to restore areas of deterioration that is full-depth crack repair ranked firstly, followed with pothole patching, crack filling, and crack repair.