A User-Friendly Capital Programming Tool for Highway Maintenance Districts

Thompson, Paul D.; Tapio, Raimo; ?ij?, Juha; ,

A User-Friendly Capital Programming Tool for Highway Maintenance Districts

by Paul D. Thompson, Cambridge Systematics, Inc, United States,
Raimo Tapio, Cambridge Systematics, Inc, United States,
Juha ?ij?, Cambridge Systematics, Inc, United States,

Document Type: Proceeding Paper

Part of: Microcomputer Applications in Transportation III

Abstract:

The Roads and Waterways Administration of Finland is developing a microcomputer system, called the Project Analysis System (PAS), to help district engineers in their annual preparation of five-year capital programs for pavement rehabilitation. Similar in its scale and organization to many state Departments of Transportation in the United States, the agency has thirteen relatively autonomous district offices responsible for a total of 76,000 km of public roads. Over the past several years, the central administration and the districts have been developing essential information systems to help in the capital programming and budgeting process, including a comprehensive Road Data Bank, a national network-level economic optimization model, and a maintenance management system. Now the agency is bringing these ingredients together in a practical tool for planning pavement rehabilitation projects. The PAS has functional capabilities for: applying the national economic model's recommendations to specific roads; helping the engineer to fashion specific projects, using cost models and other built-in analytical features; summarizing and displaying inventory and condition data about projects; and evaluating the engineer's program in the context of the network-level recommendations, policy goals, and budget constraints.

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