TECHNOLOGIES FOR RURAL ROADS

Submitted by, G.Indumathi B.tech Civil (final yr) Pondicherry Engineering College Puducherry

CONTENTS

SCOPE RURAL ROADS NEED FOR RURAL ROAD TECHNOLOGIES IRC CODES ON RURAL ROADS PLANNING DESIGN OF RURAL ROADS CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES MATERIALS FOR CONSTRUCTION ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES CONCLUDING REMARKS

SCOPE: In our country, Rural Roads development is a massive and complex endeavour. Rural Roads are the virtual lifelines for the people residing in rural areas. Rural roads are the last link of the transport network; however, they often form the most important connection in terms of providing access for the rural population. Building good quality rural roads is a particular skill in itself, requiring proper planning, experienced supervision, good workmanship and the selection of the correct technology and work methods. Since the year 2000 onwards, Government of India had undertaken the dedicated programme known as Pradhan Mantra Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). IRC providing uniform guidelines on rural roads to achieve planned and effective development of rural roads.. Their design and construction need to cater for the common type of vehicle loads and allow access throughout the year and in all kinds of weather conditions. Due to the size and extensive distribution of rural roads, road agencies are under pressure to find low cost solutions that allow authorities to build and maintain an extensive network of roads. The manual on rural roadsl attempts to present a set of technical solutions and works methods commonly applied in a number of countries where the use of local resources is given serious consideration when building rural roads. Its success, in terms of emphasising the use of locally available resources such as labour, tools and light equipment, combined with good workmanship and high quality standards, has given this technology its due recognition. The target should be to connect all habitations with all-weather rural roads instead of fair weather roads which was done earlier.

RURAL ROADS: Rural roads are the low traffic roads present in areas of low population of 500 to 1000 persons. The rural areas having a population of 500 is called a hamlet. The Road system in India has been classified by the Indian Roads Congress into three categories. These are as follows: i. ii. iii. Primary Road System- Expressways and National Highways (NH) Secondary Road System- State Highways (SH) and Major District Roads (MDR) Tertiary System or Rural Roads- Other District Roads (ODR) and Village Roads (VR).

CLASSIFICATION OF RURAL ROADS Rural roads is a tertiary system of roads in the total network of roads which include

Other District Roads (ODR): These are roads serving rural areas of production and providing them with outlet to market centres, taluk headquarters, block development headquarters or other main roads. Village Roads (VR): These are roads connecting villages/Habitation or groups of Habitation with each other and to the nearest road of a higher category. NEED FOR RURAL ROAD TECHNOLOGIES The permanent or seasonal absence of road access is a constraining factor in terms of providing rural communities with essential services such as education, primary health care, water supply, local markets as well as economic opportunities. The availability of such services and opportunities are difficult to sustain without a good quality and well-maintained rural road network, which provides regular and efficient transport access throughout the year. Recently, during the last five years Government of India has undertaken a dedicated programme known as Pradhan Mantra Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) to provide rural connectivity to all habitations under the Ministry of Rural Development. More recently, Bharat Nirman, a time bound business plan adopted to provided rural infrastructure during 2005-09, rural roads have been taken as one of the components and blended with PMGSY programme. It targeted to provide connectivity to all habitations having population of 1000 and above (500 and above in hilly, desert and tribal areas) by 2009 and also aimed to upgrade the existing rural roads for overall network development, which is a more objective approach. the current projects scope can be expanded to cover additional poorly connected states, like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh,etc To connect 66,800 habitations with population over 1000 with all weather roads through Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) scheme To construct 1, 46,000Km of new rural roads. To upgrade and modernize 1, 94,000Km of existing rural roads. . The scheme is to be implemented in phases wherein the number of roads under each phase would be governed by the population of habitations (hamlets). For example, the initial phase would attempt to cover all inhabitations with a population of 1000 and 500 and above in hilly,desert areas. The PMGSY will permit the Upgradation (to prescribed standards) of the existing roads in those Districts where all the eligible Habitations of the designated population size have been provided all-weather road connectivity..

IRC CODES ON RURAL ROADS

IRC: 64- 1990 Guidelines for Capacity of Roads in Rural Areas (First Revision) IRC: 66- 1976 Recommended Practice for Site Distance on Rural Highways IRC: 73- 1980 Geometric Design Standards for Rural (Non Urban) Highways MINISTRY OF SURFACE TRANSPORT PUBLICATIONS Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORT & H) - Pocket Book for Highway Engineers, 2002 (Second Revision)

PLANNING Proper planning is imperative to achieve the objectives of the Programme in a systematic and cost effective manner. The Manual for the Preparation of District Rural Roads Plan and the Core Network shall be treated as part of the Guidelines and would stand amended to the extent modified by the present Guidelines. The Rural Roads Plan and the Core Network would constitute the basis for all planning exercises. STEPS INVOLVED IN PLANNING Consolidated programme of developing an optimal network of roads based on a master plan will provide rationality of choice and helps to avoid wastage of resources. The network plan or master plan needs to be prepared at a level which is convenient for map preparation and data collection. Planning database: It is necessary to build a database for all the habitations and existing network of roads. The first step is to collect all the information available at district,block and habitation level from secondary sources which include revenue records,census records,etc The second step is to collect detailed information on road link through field surveys. The data collected are habitation level data,road inventory data and map preparation.

DESIGN OF RURAL ROADS

The design of the road should be based on soil parameters, rainfall intensity and the estimated or projected traffic on the proposed road. The design for rural roads is done in two stages such as Geometric design and Pavement design

GEOMETRIC DESIGN The geometric design should be based on general terrain conditions as well as simple and cost effective design according to the standards specified by the Indian Roads Congress. The geometric design standards can be more gentle values than the minimum values specified in the guidelines when conditions are favourable and cost. The improvement of features like grade,curvature and widening of cross drainage works includes the geometric requirement. The design parameters considered in this are Terrain, Design Speed, Cross-sectional elements like road land width, building and control lines, roadway width, carriageway width, shoulder width,side slopes,etc. PAVEMENT DESIGN The road structure is divided into four major components namely land, earthwork, pavement and cross drainage works. The pavement constitutes one third to one half of the total cost of the road, therefore very careful consideration should be given to the choice of pavement type and design. The factors which govern the selection of the pavement type are the Initial cost of construction Maintenance cost Construction technology Availability of required equipments Strength of sub-soil along the road Traffic Environmental factors such as rainfall and temperature variations

The rural roads will not have traffic intensity or axle loads as compared to other categories of roads but even a tractor trolley with heavy axle loads or iron-tyred animal drawn cart may cause damage to an under designed pavement. The design parameters are Design Traffic, Design life.

TRAFFIC: To obtain a realistic estimate of design traffic, existing traffic and its rate of growth are considered. If adequate data is not available, an average value of 6 percent may be adopted for traffic growth rate. The traffic study can be done based on IRC 9. DESIGN LIFE: Roads in rural areas are designed for a design life of 10 years. The thin bituminous surfacing that is provided on the low volume traffic roads has a life of about 5 years. COMPUTATION OF DESIGN TRAFFIC: This involves the estimates of the initial volume of commercial vehicles per day (A), traffic growth rate ( r), and design life in years(x)

The traffic for the design life is given as A=P (1+r) (n+x) Where P-number of commercial vehicles per day at last count n- number of years between the last count and the year of completion of construction. The pavement components are subgrade, sub-base, base course,pavement surface. CONSTRUCTION OF RURAL ROADS The performance of roads is directly linked with quality of construction, the purpose of road construction is to provide a firm, durable and even surface of the pavement which could stand the stress imparted due to traffic and climatic conditions. The road construction activity starts from earthwork for embankment and completes with high quality surface finish with bituminous or concrete construction. The typical rural road consists of embankment/subgrade constructed using local soils, subbase or a blanket layer of moorum, gravel or similar granular material followed by base course and sealing with thin bituminous surface course

MATERIALS FOR CONSTRUCTION The specifications for pavement materials in various layers in rural roads should be as economical as possible. The local materials which are cheaper should be used to the maximum extent. Low cost marginal and industrial waste materials may be promoted for rural Road construction; necessary design and specifications are developed. The standard construction technology should be used for ensuring quality of construction; however, wherever possible labour based construction methods also may be adopted to create employment to the local people. But, it must be emphasized that employment generation is not the focus of rural road programmes. Many lower cost technologies like soil stabilization are not used often due to lack of appropriate mechanical devices; such shortcomings must be removed by appropriate developments for machineries. For bituminuous construction, the materials like dry lean concrete can be used as sub-base or base course where good quality aggregates are not available. Polymer Modified Bitumen (PMB) or Crumb Rubber Modified Bitumen(RMB) is used only in wearing course on extreme climatic variations CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES 1. Conventional methods 2. Mechanized methods 3. Intermediate techniques Conventional construction methods are labour based and the construction operations are done manually. In mechanized method, most of the operations are done with machines like grader, bull dozer and paver, etc but this method is not cost effective in the case of rural roads. In our country, intermediate technology is normally adopted for construction and maintenance activities to achieve Employment opportunities and to ensure desired quality of roads. Uses labour with low-end technology equipments. But in special cases or due to severe climatic conditions (hilly areas), the fair weather available for work is less, so mechanization is needed to achieve high productivity to make use of the available short time.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES 1. In all developments of rural roads the environmental issues must be safeguarded. Further, speedy construction to be ensured by direct participation of authority responsible for environmental clearances. 2. Afforestation along the rural roads by plantations of fruit trees etc be systematically adopted as part of the design (i.e. DPR) itself. 3. Impact of land acquisition, especially for the marginal farmers of specific states, be duly considered at the time of project development. The State Government may be required to compensate the affected person/family for the same in lieu of community objectives of the road.

CONCLUDING REMARKS: Even today, only about 60% of villages/ Habitations in the country are connected by roads. Rural developments should be planned and pursued as a National development model including the interactive growth of Rural and Urban areas roads with engineering inputs for repair and maintenance with back-up systems will increase the sustainability of roads. Bharat Nirman Yojana is an action-oriented business plan for rural infrastructure. It is an important step in bridging the gap between rural and urban areas and improving the quality of lives of rural masses. It comprises projects on irrigation, roads (Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana), housing (Indira Awaaz Yojana), water supply, and electrification and telecommunication connectivity. .

REFERENCES:

1. Innovative methods and appropriate technologies for development of rural roads , Dr. S. Gangopadhyay , Journal of Indian highways, November 2009 2. Design and Specifications of Rural Roads for Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, New Delhi, 2001

3. IRC:SP:20 (2002) Rural Roads Manual-Design, Construction and Maintenance of rural roads, Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi,2002 4. www.bharatnirman.gov.in

5. www.planningcommission.nic.in