In a developing country like India, periodic evaluation of low volume urban roads is required to prioritize the order of maintenance and rehabilitation of road network. This paper presents a typical case study of an urban road network of Tumkur city, Karnataka, India. Six roads stretches of the selected road network were investigated for traffic volume, functional and structural condition in terms of CBR value of the subgrade soil, rebound deflection from Benkelman Beam Deflection(BBD) survey, International Roughness Index(IRI) using Machine for Evaluating Roughness using Low-cost Instrumentation(MERLIN) and condition rating based on extent of cracking, patching, rutting and potholes. The structural condition is evaluated using KENLAYER software to obtain the critical strains. Two of the existing measures of pavement condition are used to evaluate the pavement condition and to decide the order of maintenance priority for the selected road network. It is found that the two methods viz Pavement Condition Index (PCI) and Maintenance Priority Index (MPI) do not yield a satisfactory ranking of the maintenance requirement. A more comprehensive prioritization index called Modified Maintenance Priority Index (MMPI) is proposed and is found to give realistic ranking of the maintenance priority requirement of the selected road network.

In India the nature of overlay treatment in the name of maintenance on flexible pavements is generally Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) as this technology is in for many years. Lack of interest in selecting different resurfacing alternative is seen in road contractors because of ease in construction of HMA overlay and experience gained by them in construction of HMA overlay. Whitetopping can be a very interesting resurfacing technique for existing asphalt pavements when rutting is the major distress on pavement surface. In the present work an attempt is made to evaluate the structural and functional condition of existing flexible pavements and provide a cost effective rehabilitation solution. A network of six urban roads coming under Tumkur Municipality is selected an extensive field, laboratory investigation, pavement analysis and design of rehabilitation alternative has been carried out. The field work consists of road inventory, traffic studies, MERLIN and BBD studies. PCI is computed based on selected distress parameters (Rut, Patch, Pothole, Cracks). In addition, IRI, BI and characteristics pavement deflections are computed from MERLIN and BBD surveys. Based on PCI, IRI, BI and deflection values pavement rehabilitation measures are considered. The summary of overall condition assessment on functional and structural evaluation in majority of the cases has resulted in 'resurfacing'. In the present study an attempt has been made to design whitetopping section and asphalt overlay as a minor rehabilitation alternative for the in-service flexible pavements. The whitetopping design has resulted in 5 thin whitetopping sections and 1 ultra-thin whitetopping section. Strengthening by asphalt overlay has resulted in different overlay thicknesses for selected roads. Finally cost comparison between whitetopping and asphalt overlay reveals that for majority of selected roads whitetopping proves to be a cost effective rehabilitation solution than the asphalt overlay.