A Framework to Incorporate Safety Performance for Low Volume Roads in Pavement Management Systems

Low volume roads provide the connectivity between residential, agricultural areas and the national road network. Those are especially critical in rural areas to provide accessibility for the community to fulfill their social and economic needs. Low volume roads account for nearly 61% of the road network length in Sri Lanka while the rapid motorization take place, it is expected the traffic volume on these roads will increase significantly in the future. However, some of these roads have not been constructed and maintained according to the standard design guidelines, and due to that major safety issues are raised on such roads. This study focusses on the main causal factors of low volume road accidents and a methodology developed to evaluate the safety performance based on the roadway characteristics. Further, a framework is proposed to incorporate safety performance in decision criteria especially in the multi-objective optimization process of pavement management systems.