Road serviceability represents a fundamental requirement in order to satisfy the different needs of modern society. This research project presented in this paper has aimed at providing out-of-town roads with synthetic indexes, starting from those parameters that represent the characteristics of the road system service offered by the infrastructure. First of all, these parameters can be gathered together in sectors concerning safety, comfort, distance covering time, services, environment and traffic conditions. Their importance varies according to the point of view from which they are considered: the user's, the owner's (who could also be the manager) and infrastructures crossed countries inhabitants. The first ones make a continual comparison between service quality felt and service quality demanded (desired). The result of this comparison is a judge of better or worse satisfaction through an equilibrium subjective process where the evaluation main parameters are safety, equal costs, accessibility and comfort. The other subjects involved make an evaluation too, but they make a social and interactive equilibrium process whose aim is verifying disadvantaged people, for the presence of road facility, absence. The aim of this research is, therefore, that of defining an algorithm that, starting from specific findings on the road, determines the road system service offered, i.e. the Global Level of Service - Livello di Servizio Globale (GLS) - supplied by the road being examined. Rational and conventional definition process of road service quality, once pointed out, has enormous application potentialities because it can be used as a basis for technique, economic and strategic choices linked to road facilities. Since some years, the Department of Highways and Transportations of Polytechnic of Bari is studying these problems. This paper presents the state in advance of these studies, four years later their first presentation at Kuala Lampur PIARC World Congress. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
Samenvatting