Model Development for Comprehensive Evaluation of Freeway Maintenance Quality

Freeways are the backbone of a highway system and they are designed to provide users with high standards of service. In order to maintain a high level of freeway service, adequate and appropriate maintenance should be routinely performed. Determining the need for, and the appropriate type of, routine maintenance may be accomplished with systematically performed, comprehensive evaluations of freeway maintenance quality. This paper summarizes a research project sponsored by the Ministry of Communications of China and the Highway Bureau of Jiangsu Province, which was to develop comprehensive evaluation procedures and models for freeway maintenance. The freeway in this system consists of six primary subsystems: pavement, bridge, subgrade, on-road facility, culvert, and roadside vegetation. Based upon survey and research, comprehensive evaluation models for the integrated estimation of maintenance quality of the six subsystems are set up by way of linear regression. Analysis of the correlation between the subjective evaluation of survey crews and objective evaluation of the models is carried out, and the result shows that the models are valid and reasonable.