Long-Term Maintenance Planning Method of Rural Roads under Limited Budget: A Case Study of Road Network

At present, the task of maintaining and managing rural roads in China is becoming increasingly severe. To solve the problems of insufficient scheme benefits, complex feasible solutions, and low optimization efficiency in long-term maintenance planning of rural road networks under a limited budget, it is urgent to develop maintenance decision-making models and optimization methods suitable for rural roads in China. This paper focuses on the critical aspects of performance evaluation, prediction, and decision-making. Firstly, this paper proposes evaluation indicators and maintenance countermeasures suitable for rural roads, combining them with the characteristics of rural road performance degradation. Based on different treatment measure levels, RPCI and RRQI performance prediction models are established. On this basis, an improved heuristic optimization method is proposed, which realizes rapid optimization of the most cost-effective solution. Finally, the model and method proposed in this paper are applied to the case analysis of 10 rural roads in Haimen City, generating 171 optimal maintenance sections, further verifying the feasibility and effectiveness of the model. The study provides a theoretical basis for the scientific management of rural road maintenance.