Frequently asked questions

Road asset management is a comprehensive and structured approach to the delivery of community benefits through long-term management of road networks. Road asset management has been described as a systematic process of maintaining, upgrading and operating physical assets cost-effectively, combining engineering principles with sound business practices and economic theory, and providing tools to facilitate an organised logical approach to decision making.

The World Road Association has defined asset management as a systematic process of effectively maintaining, upgrading and operating assets, combining engineering principles with sound business practice and economic rationale, and providing the tools to facilitate a more organised and flexible approach to making decisions necessary to achieve the public's expectations.

Refer to the 'What is Asset Management' page for the eight elements of road asset management.

In summary, the practical challenge in road asset management is to find an acceptable balance between road network features, standards and condition and broad economic, social, safety and environmental community objectives.

The Australian and New Zealand road networks, with a combined estimated total written down replacement value of more than A$150 billion (excluding land), probably represent the most expensive publicly owned group of assets. In addition, Australia and New Zealand have higher road lengths and road freight (tonne km) per person or per $GDP than most other countries. This indicates the importance of road freight to the two national economies.

The road network is critical to our economic and social needs. In Australia and New Zealand the road network is 900,000 kilometres long (812,000 kilometres in Australia and 92,000 kilometres in New Zealand). It is used by over 14.7 million registered motor vehicles (12.4 million in Australia and 2.3 million in New Zealand) and 420,000 motor cycles (370,000 in Australia and 50,000 in New Zealand).

The total estimated value of the road networks is of the order of A$150 billion. The total annual investment by all levels of government (national, state and local) in operating, maintaining and adding to the networks is of the order of A$7 billion (A$6 billion in Australia and towards A$1 billion in New Zealand).

The primary focus in road asset management is on the purpose or function of the network and its components, more than on the administrative or legal classification.

In broad terms, the Australian road system consists of National Highways, Arterial Roads (variously known as State Highways, State Roads, Main Roads, etc) and Local Roads, while the New Zealand road system consists of State Highways and Local Roads. These administrative classifications indicate the level of government with primary responsibility. In practice, the higher levels of government provide limited funding support for roads in the lower classifications.

To improve the effectiveness of asset management decisions, a number of road agencies have allocated their roads to categories or sub-networks. In this way, roads with similar purposes are treated consistently with respect to decisions on standards and levels of service, regardless of legal or administrative classification.

Roads are allocated to a category or sub-network on the basis of indicators such as traffic volume, numbers of heavy vehicles, travel speed, and strategic significance.

The most expensive components in a road network to build and maintain are usually road pavements and bridge structures. Much of the effort in asset management is therefore on road pavements and bridges. Both these components have relatively long lives and slow rates of deterioration.

For road pavements, a number of condition parameters are in common use, including roughness, rutting, cracking, surface texture, skid resistance, strength and stiffness (commonly indicated by deflection and curvature). The desirable features of a condition parameter are:

• the condition parameter has the potential to influence decisions about management of the asset
  
• the measurement method is repeatable with a reasonable degree of accuracy
  
• the condition parameter can be measured, reported, stored and analysed at reasonable cost.

Various definitions and procedures for measurement and reporting for these and other condition parameters are being used in Australia and New Zealand. The major road agencies are working together through Austroads to establish national standards for road and bridge condition assessment. For example, the standard for network roughness is the 2001 Austroads Guidelines for Road Condition Monitoring; Part 1 - Pavement Roughness.

Infrastructure costs form only a small proportion (around 10%) of the total cost of road travel. Road users pay directly for the bulk of the cost of road travel, mainly in the form of vehicle operating costs and the travel time costs. Relationships have been identified between road condition and road user costs. Agency costs and road user costs are therefore both relevant to life cycle evaluation of asset management options.

Road asset management involves a large quantity of data. Road asset managers rely heavily on computer systems such as databases for road inventory and condition data, various predictive tools to project road condition over long periods into the future, systems to estimate remaining life, life-cycle costs including road user costs, the value of the network, and to assist in the selection and evaluation of treatment options (pavement management systems).

Much of the detail work in asset management is in adapting available systems to suit local circumstances in these areas.

Austroads has developed a generic road asset management process (Figure 2 in AP-R202/02), for use in a range of situations. This process can be applied in a basic or a sophisticated manner. To apply this generic process, you will need to:

• assess the road network needs or objectives of your community of road users, and define your objectives
  
• take stock of your road network (develop an inventory), and make an initial assessment of its condition using at least one relevant parameter
  
• assess the rate of deterioration in condition of your network
  
• estimate the capacity of the relevant funding sources to fund asset management of your road network, over a relatively long term, say 5 to 10 years or more
  
• list available asset management options (e.g. physical treatments, traffic management, etc.), their costs and their effect on the condition and performance of the network
  
• test a range of affordable asset management options over the analysis period
  
• select the mix of options, which is most cost effective over the analysis term in progressing towards the achievement of community objectives.