Socio-Economic Impacts of Road Conditions on Low Volume Roads

Abstract

Traditionally the road conditions on low volume roads have been neglected. The main reason is the economic resources, which are insufficient to cover all the needs. But there are also other reasons why the low volume roads are kept back in the road maintenance programs. Used socio-economic models to describe the maintenance need, normally deal with road user costs consisting of time delay costs, vehicle costs and accident costs. But as the amount of traffic always is the dominating figure in the calculations the models will favour a very good condition on high volume roads and only keep the low volume roads alive. That will give the highest benefits for the society with the existing models. To change this, in order to give people living in rural areas better life conditions, there is a need for a new thinking to find alternative ways to describe the significance in having good road conditions especially in the rural areas. The first thing is to look at socio-economic impact in a wider meaning. There is a need to take a closer look at the social improvements for people living in rural areas if the
road conditions are improved. Secondly there is a need to look at the health impacts, especially for professional drivers, if rural roads are left to deteriorate. By a literature survey,
meetings and interviews with skilled people from Sweden, Finland, Norway and Scotland it is found how the socio-economic impacts are considered today by the road managers and what
is going on for the future. The report will describe briefly the models used today, some
calculations done with a Swedish model, work done and going on to improve the road
conditions on low volume roads in the partner countries and in what way the road condition
may affect personal health for road users.