Locating and sizing road maintenance depots

In Australia, routine road maintenance activities such as pavement patching, drainage works, litter collection, etc. are usually carried out by maintenance patrols who work from depots located throughout the road network. In general, the location of these depots has largely been determined on historic grounds. This paper outlines a systematic, analytic framework for examining decisions concerning the location and size of maintenance depots. A model system is described which formulates the depot location problem as an optimisation problem. Results are presented for one sub-region of the rural road network in Victoria. The scope for consolidating patrols into fewer, larger depots is highlighted by the results and the benefits of this consolidation for the road authority and its employees are discussed.