AbstractAccording to 2008 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) statistics, there are 2,734,102 miles of paved public roads in the United Sates, with an additional 1,324,245 miles of unpaved public roads. Road conditions deteriorate with time as the result of weather effects, deicing salts, and vehicle loads. The most common pavement distress includes cracking, rutting, and potholes. These pavement defects must be repaired to restore the pavement to a satisfactory service level for road users. According to the FHWA, in 2006 approximately $54.2 billion dollars was spent on maintenance and expansion, just on U.S. highways alone.Routine maintenance is a cost effective way to maintain pavement service level. Many cities are now starting to implement Maintenance Improvement Plans (MIP’s). These long-range plans will help extend the life of pavement and reduce the long-term cost of road maintenance. It is the adage of “pay a little now rather than a lot later.”Along with the MIP, using a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can help cities better manage their roads by graphically representing the MIP. This information can then be used to inform residents of upcoming road work, inform the city council on areas that are in need of repair, plan for future repairs, and track the troubled roads that seem to always be in need of repair. Many organizations are seeing the benefits of collecting roadway data and keeping a database. For cities that may not have GIS or the money to spend on an engineering firm to rate their roads, there are still ways to gather the needed data. A maintenance plan is essential, and procedures must be put in place to gather the data, analyze that data, and then implement the plan. These procedures to implement the maintenance plan and use a GIS to track the plan will be examined in this paper.
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