Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance Management: Case Study of a Small Urban City
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 15, Issue 2
Abstract
A transportation infrastructure maintenance management system (TIMMS) for a small urban city is developed. Uintah, Utah, year 2005 population 2,000, is studied. As of Fall 2001, this suburb of the Salt Lake City–Ogden urban area featured of paved roads, 133 traffic signs, 18 street lights, pavement markings, and other transportation infrastructure. A part-time city engineer was responsible for maintaining the transportation and other infrastructure. A formal TIMMS was not in place. A TIMMS emphasizing preventive maintenance on all infrastructure, along with corrective maintenance on all pavements, was estimated to require about 79% of the city engineer’s time, at an annual cost of about $88,000, or of road (2002$). About 75% of the expenses would be devoted to pavement preservation. The cost would exceed the city’s estimated transport maintenance budget ($55,775) by about 58%, while the time required of the engineer might exceed that available. A simple linear programming TIMMS formulation is developed. One heuristic solution would be to implement a scheduled maintenance program on all transport infrastructure, and corrective pavement maintenance on one major collector street. These two programs would consume the entire $55,775 budget. The budget shortfall may be indicative of a general lack of adequate funding for infrastructure maintenance in the United States. The time shortfall indicates a need for additional manpower. Further study is needed to determine how best to prioritize maintenance actions, optimize maintenance resources, and identify supplemental funding sources.
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Acknowledgments
The research team is grateful to the Uintah city engineer, Roy Fernelius, for providing information on his duties and time constraints. As of the initial submission of the paper, the writers were at the University of Utah, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 15 • Issue 2 • June 2009
Pages: 120 - 132
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 2, 2003
Accepted: Apr 4, 2008
Published online: May 15, 2009
Published in print: Jun 2009
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