Students Provide Plans for

Local Road Maintenance and Repair

For the past six summers UNH students have helped 69 municipalities manage their roads. They inventoried and identified conditions of over 3600 miles of paved and unpaved local roads. They have helped towns and cities reap the benefits of a road management system.

Many municipal officials want a list of maintenance needs. They desire long-range plans, and budgets to accomplish them. However, many face a major hurdle. They lack the resources to inventory the road network and identify surface and drainage conditions. The summer program provides that resource. The students also enter data and run reports using the Road Surface Management System (RSMS).

The students and the local road manager form a road management team. The road manager provides maps and information for RSMS. After the students inventory and identify conditions, they enter the data into the RSMS software. They then provide road managers with summary information.

The maintenance summary lists a set of repairs appropriate for each road section. After the road manager selects desired repairs, the students enter the choices in RSMS. They then prepare management and budget reports with cost estimates for each road section. The reports also contain totals for annual and capital improvement budgets. The UNH T² Center forwards a formal report to the municipality with a diskette containing the RSMS data.

The UNH T² Center will repeat this service in the summer of 2000. It will hire and supervise the students. Towns and cities will reimburse the Center for the costs. In October, municipalities will receive a letter with a worksheet to estimate a cost for budgeting. This information is available on our website. Road managers and other officials can call the UNH T² Center for an estimate or additional information.

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Return to UNH T2 Center, 33 College Road, Durham NH 03824 603-862-2826 Fax 603-862-2364