01595658

Component

Similar to other countries the Austrian population continuously concentrates in urban areas. Rural communities face challenges to provide enough financial support for the maintenance of low-volume rural community roads. Despite specific investments and efforts on spatial planning in order to develop rural areas, many communities need to implement specific cost-saving measures like concentrating on a core network. As the road infrastructure has mostly expanded within the last decades, methods for shrinking road infrastructure in a controlled manner hardly exist. This paper presents a travel demand based methodology to prioritize low-volume rural roads. Links with low demand and thus low link utility receive a low score. In contrast to existing maintenance management systems a modified transport model provides indicators of accessibility and demand to derive strategic measures. The approach serves as a decision-support system for demand-based public infrastructure investment. In this way, restrictions in the supplementary network can be argued and furthermore, the methodology contributes to the adaptation of rural infrastructure to demographic changes by using geographic information system (GIS)-based data and considering public benefits as well as spatial planning.The model has been applied within the Austrian state of Styria.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFB30 Standing Committee on Low-Volume Roads.

01584066

16-0804

English

15p

2016

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Decision support systems; Demographics; Infrastructure; Investments; Low volume roads; Maintenance management; Rural highways; Strategic planning; Travel demand

Spatial planning

Austria; Styria (Austria)

Highways; Maintenance and Preservation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-0804

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 12 2016 4:29PM