A new model of pavement maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction considering multimodal network development

The development of a multimodal transportation network to improve traffic efficiency is gaining extensive interest from researchers. Shifting road traffic to other modes of transport potentially saves travel-related costs. In particular, shifting freight traffic away from roads may reduce the deterioration of pavements, which influences the decisions related to pavement maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction requirements. However, there is little evidence on the impact of the shifting phenomenon on road maintenance requirements. This article presents a new highways agency-focused model that integrates pavement maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction decisions with development of a multimodal transportation network involving railway and seaway routes. The model is presented within an optimization framework and illustrates the application to a real-life case study. A greedy heuristic is modified by incorporating a threshold-based strategy, aligning the model with the highways agencies’ workflow, bringing with it the benefits offered by the optimization.