Sustainable road development is an enormous challenge in the context of Bangladesh as its road system grows ever bigger, and that existing roads need increasingly more funding for maintenance. The road system is still in growth stage excepting major arterial roads, which require sustained adequate funding more than ever for protection of the created assets. Besides acute financial scarcity challenges for sustainable road development are selection of right project, implementation following proper design and quality, institutional capacity building, achieving value for money, good governess, frequent recurrences of flood, national policy reform etc. This paper deals with the challenges Bangladesh is currently facing in sustainable road development along with measures taken to overcome them. The paper focuses mainly on Roads and Highways Department (RHD) as it is the main road authority in Bangladesh. For better management of road assets, RHD has a Pavement Management System (PMS), which consists of data collection, database, Highway Development and Management Model (HDM-4), procurement and implementation. Example shows that right treatment on right time can sustain aroad development in the long run. Again, experience in RHD reveals that proper construction quality can ensure well-maintained assets. Finally, Intelligent Transport System (ITS) needs to be introduced in Bangladesh in order to manage road infrastructure and traffic efficiently. A simple approach to ITS for RHD is proposed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.
Abstract