Side friction as a cause of poor pavement maintenance in India—a study using terrestrial laser scanner data

Abstract

Side friction is a peculiar characteristic that can be seen mainly in urban roads of India where the part of carriageway is utilized for activities like on-street parking, encroachment, etc. Though there are many studies on speed and capacity reduction due to side friction, however studies on carriageway width reduction are very limited. Hence an attempt has been made to measure the carriageway width loss due to side friction activities using the terrestrial laser scanner data and analyze the causes of such activities. Two locations with a stretch of about 50 m. each in Vellore, India was taken as study stretches and laser scanning was carried out using the Leica BLK 360 laser scanner. The total carriageway width and effective carriageway width were measured accurately using the point cloud data. It was found that, in one of the locations, almost one lane was occupied by on-street parking of vehicles. Aggregates were just poured over it along the lane and because of that vehicles were not moving on the lane. Hence it encourages illegal on-street parking of vehicles at that location as the lane was not utilized for vehicle movement. Similarly, at other location also, pavement maintenance was not carried out and thus a strip of sand particles along the shoulder-side lane was found which also eventually led to on-street parking as the lane was not utilized for vehicle movement. Thus, the results clearly says that lack of pavement maintenance is one of the major causes for side friction activities in India.