News

December 2015

The motivation for this project is that the current approach to the maintenance of local and tertiary roads providing community access, based on an approach similar to that used for the main road system, is not appropriate. In particular, the planning and implementation of rural road maintenance takes insufficient account of the current realities. Examples are:

• The available skills in local government technical departments, local contractors and community based organisations
• The strengths and weaknesses of the local road management arrangements and institutional set-up
• The strengths and weaknesses of systems for transferring funds for road maintenance and improvement from central to local authorities
• The types of roads – particularly the prevalence of earth and gravel roads, many of which are non-engineered
• The type and volume of traffic on the tertiary road system; this can be less than 10 motor vehicles per day on some roads, but with high levels of non-motorised traffic

The project is scheduled for 27 months and will investigate alternative approaches to managing and maintaining the tertiary road network that provides essential access to rural communities. There are three phases to the project covering Formulation, Implementation and Dissemination. The Formulation phase is scheduled to be completed within 5 months of the start of the project and will provide a detailed study design report including the proposed research methodology and selection of partner countries to be involved in the Implementation phase of the project. A stakeholder workshop is scheduled for the end of the Formulation phase to agree the way forward for implementation and subsequent dissemination of the findings.

The above excerpt was taken from an article by Caroline Visser, ReCAP, 30th November 2015

The full article can be found here:

http://www.research4cap.org/Recap-news/Roughton