Common issues in the road maintenance

In general, the main problems in maintaining the road infrastructure are rooted in the institutional and financial issues, with some references to the technical, organisational, and human-resource issues (Heggie, 1994). More structurally, Robinson et al. (1998) classify factors

62 affecting the performance of the road management agency into two broad categories, internal and external, relative to the road management agency.

The internal factors are those within the control of the agency. On the other hand, the external factors are accordingly issues, which are out of the direct control of the road administration agency. These may include the physical environment, legal and regulatory framework, the socio-cultural background of the country, political situation, macro economy and the national resource availability, overall government employment policies, and relationship with other institutions. More details of these factors are presented in Figure 2.8.

Figure 2.8 – Road Management Issues

Source: Robinson et al. (1998)

Even though these affecting factors are divided into different categories, they are not mutually exclusive and are in fact related to each other. For instance, the availability and use of data may be affected by the availability and sufficiency of fund allocation, which could be caused by the political interference and the macro-economic condition.

As further discussed below, a number of studies have identified common issues related to the road maintenance. These common issues include fund competition, division of responsibilities between central and regional government, politicised priorities, lack of customer focus,

63 perverse monetary incentives, inefficient work methods and inflexible term and conditions of the civil service (Heggie, 2003). Despite the rapidly deteriorating road infrastructure due to the maintenance neglect, developing countries tend to expand their road infrastructure without giving adequate priority to maintaining the existing networks (UNECA, 1987). As Klockow and Hofer (1991) suggest, road maintenance neglect may lead to increased vehicle cost, severe damages requiring re-construction of road, unbearable financial needs, and accelerated deterioration due to the heavier and more frequent traffic.

Martinez (2001) also examines the experience of road maintenance in the sub-Saharan African countries and concluded that the road deterioration problems are rooted to the following problems.

 The financial constraint, leads to road maintenance financing difficulty

 Traffic growth and axle overload exceed forecasts

 Technical constraint affects road maintenance quality

 Highway administration lacked technical and management capability

 ODA donors failed to supervise their projects and to coordinate their actions

The next sections will provide a more detailed discussion of the internal and the external factors affecting the road maintenance performance.

2.4.5.1 Internal Factors

As previously described, the internal factors refer to issues which are within the control of the road management agency. The internal factors can be categorised into two groups, those which are institutional and those which are rather technical.

2.4.5.1.1 Institutional factors

Following the Robinson et al. (1998) approach of classifying the road maintenance issues, the institutional factors include financial and resources management, organisational management and human resources. The following section will elaborate these issues in more detail.

64 2.4.5.1.1.1 Financial

From the financial aspect, financial management capacity and funds sufficiency are often referred to as the main sources of challenges in the road maintenance, particularly in the developing countries. As Talvitie (2000) summarises, there are five sets of costs need to be considered by the road administration namely the construction cost, rehabilitation and periodic maintenance cost, routine maintenance and system operation cost, road user costs, and external cost to society. The latter include pollution, development, and production benefits. The road management agency will therefore need to calculate the most effective expenditure allocation in order to achieve the optimum total road cost (refer to Figure 2.9 below).

Figure 2.9 – Optimization of the road condition and road budget

Source: Talvitie (2000)

The above figure shows the relationship between the road condition and the cost or budget allocation for the maintenance. As road condition gets better, the administration cost increases and the road user cost decreases. The optimum and efficient expenditure will be achieved where the balance between the two meets. This is where the road administration expenses do not exceed the savings made in the road user cost. The dotted lines show the changes in road condition and expenditure resulting from the improvement in the road administration productivity.

65 According to ADB (2003), there are a number of reasons behind the poor allocation of funds for the road maintenance and these reasons include the political, cultural, and social background. Whilst these problems are common in most countries, developing countries face additional problems, such as low income per head, acute shortage of revenue, weak governance, lack of qualified local consultants and contractors, and weak legislation (Heggie, 2003). Furthermore, ADB (2003) argues that the problems with the road maintenance are typically due to the insufficient allocation for the maintenance needs and that eventually much less is actually spent. The ADB also suggests that while on the one hand fund allocation is insufficient, the allocated fund is also inefficiently used, typically shown by the large workforce with low productivity, hence most allocations are spent for wages.

With regards to the financial support, road maintenance commonly receives low priority, particularly when it needs to compete with other sectors such as the education and health sectors. The global experience proves that when the budget allocation for the road maintenance has to compete with other sectors, the road maintenance normally loses in priority, despite the suggestion that adequate maintenance should have the highest priority on the resource utilisation (UNECA, 1987). It is argued that such a condition occurs since the benefits of maintaining roads have not been widely understood by the decision-makers and the consequence of inadequate maintenance is not always immediately obvious (Potter, 1997). In other words, it is hard to convince the politician to secure funding and to allocate funds to repair roads that do not seem to be broken (ADB, 2003), regardless the fact that billions of the capital investment made in the road sectors will be eroded due to maintenance neglect, as experienced in the Sub-Saharan Africa (Heggie, 1994).

Accordingly, to obtain sufficient and sustainable financial resources required to fund the road maintenance needs, there are several alternative resources that can be exercised, which include taxation, toll roads, external financing assistance, earmarking revenues, and the establishment of road funds (UNECA, 1987). However, the global experience shows that the difficulties in providing sufficient funds for the road maintenance have been addressed primarily by earmarking certain related taxes and charges into a dedicated account, so-called road funds. Road fund is a mechanism to collect road-user charges directly from the vehicle users. The main principle of road fund mechanism is to treat road infrastructure networks as a

66 business and to provide the market on a fee-for-service basis (Heggie, 1999). The establishment of the road fund scheme was initiated by the fact that the developing and transition countries are struggling to fund their road maintenance needs since the road sector needs outgrown the government’s tax revenues. Looking at how big the scale of the road infrastructure, it is accordingly argued that road assets need to be managed in a business-like approach, where users need to pay for using the road networks (Heggie and Vickers 1998). Accordingly, those who use the roads are charged for the services they get from the road networks. The charges are typically collected as a proportion of the fuel-levy and vehicle licences, and the funds are managed by a dedicated body.

Currently, the methods of financing the road maintenance needs through the road fund scheme has developed into the second model, commonly addressed as the ‘second generation’ road fund. The ‘first generation’ road fund was established in 1988 when the World Bank launched a Road Management Initiative (Potter, 1997). This first generation of road funds comprised of earmarking revenues from the road users into the national account and is administered by the government officials. However, this mechanism was not successful and some even failed completely (ADB, 2003). ADB further argues that the failure of the first- generation road fund mechanism rooted to three issues. First, as the revenue is collected and administered by the government officials in the national account, it is vulnerable from being raided and used for other purposes. Second, the required funds may not be released timely and sufficiently, causing a further backlog in the maintenance. Third, the funds collected under the road funds user charge mechanism may not entirely be deposited in the road fund agency, an example of which is when the state-owned petroleum company retaining revenues intended for road funds during the economic recession.

This condition led to the development of ‘second generation’ road fund. The second generation road fund requires funds to be managed by a dedicated and independent body, generally focused only on the maintenance of road infrastructure. The second generation road fund appears to be more successful. It involves the collection of road user charges and administration by an independent board consisting of the public and the private sectors. The aim of the second generation road funds remains in ensuring that the funds are spent effectively and efficiently, giving the road users the best value for money.

67 Another possible approach is through the cost-sharing mechanism. In such mechanism, financial support from the road fund administration is made available on a cost-sharing or fund- matching basis. However, this approach seems to be difficult to implement where the local government lacks the resources to contribute from their own local revenue.

In the case of Indonesia, in order to improve the road condition and help ensure the sustainability of the road infrastructure, the Indonesian government has initiated the establishment of a road fund agency as stipulated in Law no 22/2009. However, the road fund agency has not been functioning and its supporting mechanism and regulations have not been clearly defined. Until the road fund agency starts functioning, it seems that the road maintenance will continue relying on fund sourced from the general expenditure and the normal budgetary system.

Whilst most countries are leaning towards accepting the road fund scheme as an effective means to providing sustainable financial resources to the road maintenance needs, Potter (1997) underlines that a dedicated road fund scheme is only a means to delivering efficient road maintenance services. Moreover, even though the road fund model seems to be a sustainable and viable resource of financial needs for the road maintenance, the main concern lies in carefully setting up the fund collection and distribution method to reduce the possibility of fund being diverted away from the local road maintenance (Robinson and Stiedl, 2003). As the financial aspect has been discussed, the next section presents the institutional capacity.

2.4.5.1.1.2 Institutional capacity

With regards to the core problems of the road maintenance issues, the report of UNECA (1987) acclaims that the main cause of road deterioration problems related to the institutional capacity. In supporting the argument, Robinson (2006) suggests that even though most developing countries insufficiently finance their road maintenance needs, lack of financial resources is not the only causes of the road management agencies’ poor performance. In most cases, there is also a need to strengthen and improve the organisational management and the regulatory arrangement.

From the organisational and management aspect, learning from the experience of the Sub- Saharan African countries, the institutional problems in the road maintenance rooted to the

68 poor management and the lack of enabling environment within the road agency, which undermined the need to provide incentives and to increase staff motivation (Heggie, 1994). More specifically, Heggie (1994) further argues that the problems include unclear managerial responsibility, poor terms and condition for staff, poor leadership, little managerial autonomy, keeping accounts to ensure that budget is not over-spent, no independent source of revenue, as well as the lack of independent external audit. World Bank, cited in Klockow and Hofer (1991), adds that the main issues in the road maintenance problems are caused by misallocated fund, unsound maintenance strategies, inefficient implementation, and lack of public pressure for better roads.

Furthermore, UNECA (1987) argues that road damage could have been contained should the institution operates in a more effective, responsible and attentive manner. It points out that the institutional reforms may be addressed by increasing political attention to road maintenance, strengthening the accountability of the road management agency, and by appreciating the performance through the introduction of incentives. It is also suggested that strengthening the road management accountability, in particular, should be achieved by linking budgets with the physical outputs, separation of planning and evaluation tasks from the executing agency, and monitoring of road conditions. Moreover, UNECA (1987) emphasises that in order to improve the utilisation of the road system and therefore facilitate the movement of people and commodities, a successful road management agency would require competent planning, designing, financing, and scheduling capacity, in addition to providing training to the human resources.

Another point worth emphasis is that even though a proper road maintenance plan needs to be prepared for the medium and long term period (e.g., three, five or ten-year period), the budget allocation is normally allocated on annual bases. Hence, the maintenance strategy (e.g. budget allocation, work priorities and scope of works) selected for each year may affect the maintenance plan of the subsequent year. To put into practice, any unfinished or neglected maintenance work will need to be added in the subsequent year plan. However, the financial needs will eventually be more than the initial estimates as the pavements continue to deteriorate, requiring greater maintenance interventions at the greater costs. Therefore, not only such condition illustrates the importance of regularly modifying and updating the

69 maintenance plan it also demonstrates that neglecting immediate maintenance requirements would eventually add burdens to the subsequent year plan and increase the total maintenance budget needs.

However, as highlighted by Klockow and Hofer (1991), the road maintenance problems do not exist in isolation and in fact embedded in a system which comprises many elements. As also suggested by UNECA (1987), road maintenance efforts should address the issues concerning the encouragement and the provision of training for the road maintenance personnel, effective distribution among relevant institutions, establishment of effective transport regulations, improve controls and monitoring, and the use of simple method of inspection. The above discussion concludes the discussion on the institutional factors of the road maintenance problems. Accordingly, the next section will discuss the technical factors.

2.4.5.1.2 Technical factors

The technical aspect of the road maintenance covers the availability and use of data, materials and supplies, and the plant and equipment; the capability to undertake technical operation, monitoring, and feed-back; and access to research and information. This section will accordingly highlight the major external issues experienced by the road administrations.

To adequately and properly produce a good-quality road maintenance plan, the road management agency would be required to utilise a maintenance management system. The tool would assist the road administrator, planners and the field staff to determine the financial needs, setting up priorities, and produce implementation programs, and for the road monitoring team to predict the time that pavement distress had been reached. Such tasks are made possible since the management system provides better prediction models of the pavement performance and vehicle operating cost, as well as computerised analysis which enables the evaluation of the vast array of options (UNECA, 1987). It further suggests that the information from the database will also assist the preparation of the life-cycle analysis of the pavement in order to optimally generate the construction-maintenance-rehabilitation strategy and minimise the total costs.

However, the road management system also needs to establish a database, and more importantly the maintenance and regular updates of the database to reflect the actual

70 condition. Unfortunately, the accuracy and the quality of the information provided by the maintenance management systems are highly dependent on the operators rather than the process of procurement and setting up the computer hardware and software. Therefore, the system needs to engage expert advisory services and provide adequate training for the local personnel. Nevertheless, as previously indicated, the biggest challenge in the management systems remains in the commitment of the senior management to allocate fund and sustain the trained staff for the management of the system, which is commonly neglected soon after the installation (ADB, 2003).

Furthermore, as presented by UNECA (1987), there has been a great interest within the road management agencies to utilise modern methods and techniques of road maintenance, maintenance management systems, and the maintenance road equipment. However, such a high interest has been hindered by the unavailability of the financial resources and local labour, even though certain maintenance operations require the use of such equipment.

The above sections have provided profound discussions on the internal factors of the road management issues. Accordingly, the following section will elaborate the external factors.

2.4.5.2 External Factors

External factors are those which are beyond the direct control of the road authorities. As discussed previously in section 2.4.5.1.1.2, one of the concerns that need to be addressed to improve road management capacity is by establishing effective transport regulation and monitoring method. With regard to regulation, UNECA (1987) highlights the need to implement strict monitoring of vehicle imports, enforcement of tax levy based on axle load, promotion of multiple axle vehicles, and the development of measures for weight restriction monitoring. However, as described by ADB (2003), the problems in road management are not only due to the weak planning and programming produced by the road management agency, but also due to the political interference in the day-to-day operation. More discussion on the political aspect will be covered in the next section.

71 2.4.5.2.1 Politicised decision making process

In the developing countries, decisions are often made based on consensus instead of economic rationale and therefore road is often seen as public service, not a business (ADB, 2003). As a result, many governments in the developing countries fail to see the importance and the economic benefits of preventive road maintenance. Consequently, many governments opt to pursue the more expensive curative approach which is to rehabilitate the road networks when they are heavily damaged. In another case, in order to reduce the social jealousy, it is considered more important and politically ‘attractive’ to pave new road and reduce the isolation of a village instead of spending money for maintaining the existing road of the neighbouring villages (ADB, 2003). In similar fashion, UNECA (1987) further stressed that the attitude of the decision makers towards road maintenance frequently and adversely affects the road condition as the politicians promote construction of new roads in order to seek prestige,