Switzerland - National Report Strategic Direction Session ST1: Road quality service levels and innovations to meet user expectations.

Application of maintenance management systems for roads can provide an improvement of the level of service given to the road user. The first chapter of the report describes the current state of development in this area with special attention on already implemented guidelines for the organisation of maintenance construction sites, data collection efforts for monitoring the condition of pavements and structures and finally the conceptual developments for maintenance management systems. The proposed solution will lead in the short and medium term to the use of separate management systems for pavements, structures and electro-mechanical installations. these systems will be integrated at a later date into a road management system. In Switzerland deposits of gravel are growing scarce. For this and ecological reasons an effort is being made to recycle material, i.e. material produced by roadway demolition -instead of being dumped-should be re-used in a way to achieve the highest possible quality. This means orderly reconstruction and separation of the materials strictly according to grade. In the course of constructing new motorways initial tests were carried out on the reusability of old concrete pavements. It was thereby proved that -provided appropriate preparatory measures are taken- a high-quality concrete pavement able to withstand thawing salt can be produced, without primary raw materials having to be added. The concrete test pavements (two short motorway sections) have been carrying traffic since 1990 and 1991, respectively. Traffic loads have a determinant influence on the performance of pavements. It is therefore very important to be able to forecast and to quantify this factor as precisely as possible. The last chapter of the report presents the results of a research project with the analysis of automated weight measurements of traffic loadings in order to increase the degree of reliability of conversion factors of different traffic loads into a number of equivalent standard axles. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.