Strategies for economical construction of rural roads

Abstract

Poor construction and maintenance of rural roads is key component of poverty in rural areas. Rural road network constitutes the highest road network percentage of total road network in India, hence required a great care and huge investment while construction and maintenance. Therefore, there is an urgent need to construct and maintain the rural roads in an optimal manner.This existing huge rural road network is highlighting the need to take some effective measures for controlling and maintaining the deterioration of the rural road network. However, there are various issues like choice of appropriate type of pavement, economical construction of pavements depending upon traffic and sub grade soil requirements, quality assurance during construction and timely and effective maintenance during operation period of road etc. should be taken under consideration. There is a need to develop some innovative strategies for reducing cost of construction of rural roads. These strategies will be useful for achieving the best values possible for the available resources in providing and operating smooth safe and economical pavements for rural roads in India.

However, there are various issues like choice of appropriate type of pavement, economical construction of pavements depending upon traffic and sub grade soil requirements, quality assurance during construction and timely and effective maintenance during operation period of roads etc. Various factors are there that affects the construction cost like subgrade characteristics, drainage characteristics, material characteristics etc. All these factors are dependent upon availability of fund. Non-availably of the required standardized material for construction is the mostly seen in many states. Therefore, transportation of standardized material causes high increment in construction cost. To achieve economy, use of locally available materials will be more emphasized and strategies will be suggested to utilize locally available material more efficiently for construction of pavements. Thus, it is expected that such a study will be very useful to reduce the cost of construction, and thus well leads to economy in providing huge rural road infrastructure in the country.

Keywords:Reducing cost of construction, Rural roads, Economical, Strategies