Around 75% of basic road data, including geometry, texture, roughness and assets such as culverts and bridges, for 23,000 km of State Highways and major district roads has been submitted to the Tamil Nadu Road Sector Project (TNRSP). The remaining data would be coded and uploaded in a month.
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“This road condition assessment data will help officials and engineers plan the future spending on roads. It will also assist them in identifying black spots by incorporating traffic data and in carrying out corrective measures,” explained sources in the Highways Department.
Of the 23,000 kilometres, 11,640 km were major district roads and 11,780 km were State highways, said Parasuraman, managing director of the Chennai-based Indian Road Survey and Management (IRSM), which had been conducting the survey since last September.
“We have equipment fitted in network survey vehicles with 13 lasers to scan both above and below the roads’ surface. We scan up to 1.5 m below the surface, where we collect data based on the vibration,” he added.
The vehicle can cover up to 150 km of road a day depending on the traffic. Since lasers are used, the survey cannot be done at night. Usually, such surveys are done manually.