The Ministry gives road maintenance significant attention for his profound belief that the maintenance and preservation of roads are no less important than its implementation, to maintain the level of road efficiency and ensure safety for its users. More than 60,000 km of paved roads are subject to preventive and regular maintenance.
Each year, the roads are scanned using modern laser equipment to determine the conditions of asphalt paving layers, show the levels of damage and begin the maintenance process. A comprehensive examination with a numerical scale that reflects the status of the establishments is carried out to indicates its status. Another full scan is conducted to determine the condition of the non-pavement road elements' performance through certain criteria for each.
The ministry seeks to develop the performance of maintenance and operation, taking advantage of modern techniques and advanced methods to identify the problems of roads and assess their impact on the users, also, to determine the future situation of roads.
The Ministry maintains roads through contracting with Saudi contractors every three years. The number of maintenance contracts signed is as follows:
- 112 road maintenance contracts in all regions of the Kingdom.
- Ten contracts for the maintenance and operation of road lighting and electrical works in eight areas.
The maintenance process goes through stages as the following:
- Regular Maintenance: simple work carried out by the maintenance units and aims to provide high-level service to ensure the safety and security for road users, the means of transport, goods and movable property, also limit the spread of more damage needed to be repaired.
And that includes:
- Continuous periodic inspection of roads and associated bridges, tunnels, drainage pipes, road shoulders, traffic signs and others, and perform it on permanent basis or whenever necessary
- Cleaning the road.
- Filling cracks and repairing minor defects on the road surface.
- Fix the road shoulders and curves.
- Clean up rainwater drainage pipes, culvert and implement repairs required for concrete elements.
- Inspection, maintenance, and repair barriers and fences.
- Repair or replace road signs and road paint.
- Clean and shape the boundaries of the road area.
Preventive Maintenance, which works on the longevity of the road, by doing the following:- Cover the surface of the road with new layers.
- Replace the asphalt layers either by re-paving or completely remove and reconstruct depending on the condition of the road.
- Rebuild collapsed layers.
- Inset additional drainage pipes/culvert and protect the bridges against flood hazards.
- Repair or renovate bridges and drainage pipes/culvert to eliminate regular/floods damages.
Road mapping mobile system
The objective of this program is to provide data on non-pavement road elements such as traffic signs, traffic lines, and road marker signs to evaluate and identify what requires a maintenance by collecting data and images and updating their database in the Ministry.
In general, road maintenance includes many tasks and activities such as repairing road damage, cleaning up the entire area within the road, insert drainage pipes, remove all that affects the safety of road users, or cause distortion of the general view of the road or obstructing traffic. Road maintenance also includes monitoring and observing the roads all the time and responding to any emergency event without delay. Roads include various elements classified into three categories, which are pavement layers like asphalt layer, base layer and soil layer.
The facilities include bridges, tunnels, underpasses, culvert, retaining walls and road protection.
Non-pavement road elements include road safety factors such as paints, reflectors, plates, protective barriers, fences and road blocks.
Maintenance of road and safety equipment
This program aims at securing spare parts and repairing the Ministry's equipment that is used in preparing and paving dirt roads, surveying and evaluating roads and facilities and maintaining trucks weighing stations. The number of stations currently operating until the end of 1436/1437 AH is (71) stable stations and (190) mobile station. The program of monitoring the trucks weight has many benefits, the most important are reducing the risk of heavy loads, and its impact on roads