Road management practices in provincial road development in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Recently the development of infrastructure has been identified as a key aspect that should be considered in the development of third world countries like Sri Lanka. It affects the economy of the country as well as the social development of people. In considering infrastructure, roads and transportation can be considered as the most important sector to be developed in Sri Lanka. As the substantial part of the population lives in rural areas and the occupations of most of them are based on agriculture, provincial roads are more useful to the rural communities than the main highways as these roads are required to transport their agricultural out puts to markets situated in urban areas. On the other hand without physical access rural communities cannot get the social benefits such as education, medical treatments, and so on as they have no access to town centres. Provincial Road Development Authority is responsible for the administration of provincial roads in each province. This research was entirely based on the road management practices of provincial roads in Sri Lanka. In this research first the issues and weaknesses in current road management practices have been identified. Thereafter the principal factors leading to these specific issues were analysed by doing case studies under the research objectives. The data was collected from four provincial road projects which were ongoing and completed rehabilitation projects using questionnaires, direct observations, archival records, and so on. This data was investigated under a case study framework and finally conclusions were drawn up. As per conclusions, a set of guidelines have been recommended for the improvement of current management practices of the provincial roads. It is expected that these guidelines would be much helpful to overcome the difficulties encountered in current management practices in provincial road development.