Ingår i: EPAM 2012: Malmö, Sweden, 5–7 September: 4th European pavement and asset management conference

Rutting, caused by studded tires is the most common reason for resurfacing on high volume road network in Finland (Belt et al. 2006). In a regional level, the pavement management operations include selecting road segments that must be treated to maintain the required ride quality and safety established by the Finnish Transport Agency. In this study, three different threshold limits (default and default + 1 mm and 2 mm) for rut depth was employed to developed three-year maintenance programs for two Finnish regions. Analysis was conduced using the actual measured pavement condition data and the rut depth extrapolation model incorporated into the PMSpro software currently in use. In addition, a visual basic application was developed to analyze the road condition data free of constraints encountered in the black-box type PMSpro software application. The analysis results suggest that by increasing allowed rut depth by 2 mm, considerable cost savings in maintenance can be achieved in the regions with high volume road network. However, in the region with less traffic, savings were dependent on how widely road sections of poor condition were scattered in the road network. This research concentrated only on rutting caused by studded tiers and other defects such as portholes and cracks, which might developed due to the delayed maintenance, were not considered in the road deterioration model used.