The ministry of surface transport has defined maintenance parameters for road projects offered on build-operate-transfer basis and brought them in line with the norms prescribed by Indian Roads Congress (IRC) for highways.
Officials said private road developers would have to build roads with roughness of about 2,200 mm per km.
This is the roughness when roads are smooth and the vehicle operating costs are lowest and is the standard laid down by IRC for new roads. Maintenance work will have to be undertaken if the roughness reaches 5,500 mm
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per km. However, national and state highways seldom conform to maintenance standards prescribed by IRC.
The sources said maintenance work in almost all highways was in arrears on account of the high costs involved. Maintenance costs are currently estimated at Rs 50,000 per km for conventional bitumen-based roads.
Highway authorities have been unable to conform to IRC standards because of budgetary constraints. A major portion of the maintenance work was on account of overload.
L R Kadiyali, a consultant to the World Bank on highway projects, estimates that roads are built to a design life of 20 years or for a passage of 150 million standard axles which have a weight of 10.2 tonnes.
"In reality, road maintenance will have to be undertaken within the first three years itself since the actual axle loads are about 16 to 18 tonnes," he said. As a result of this, maintenance costs could show a rise if roads are based on conventional bitumen pavements.
Consequently, private sector developers are choosing concrete pavements.
"In such pavements, maintenance costs are negligible," Kadiyali said. This is because such pavements seldom reach the stage of high roughness. Instead, concrete becomes smooth with use and roughness tends to reduce.
The resultant low maintenance costs will allow project operators to protect their targeted internal rate of return which, at minimum traffic flows of 30,000 passenger car units per day, is estimated at 18 per cent per annum.
Concrete pavements also allow road builders to eliminate operating risks. This is because concrete roads can absorb axle overloads.
Such operating risks will occur in case the vehicles are not loaded, since the issue of penal levies is yet to be settled with the state governments.
Penal levies are usually levied by the state governments and allowing private developers to make such levies would imply a pre-emption of state government revenues.