ABSTRACT
Lothian Regional Council’s Transportation Department, as a roads authority, has responsibility for the publicly maintained roads and footways which fall within the Region’s boundary. With around 700,000 residents, some 210,000 of whom enter and leave the city of Edinburgh each day, the pressure on the road network is extreme. The public road network in Lothian extends to around 4200 kilometres. On this there are in the order of 1-1.5 million individual inventory items for which the Department is responsible, e.g. 107,000 street lamps, 20,000 drainage gullies, and 2,000 bridges. It is estimated that the network has a replacement value of £2.6 billion. Given an annual maintenance budget which currently stands at less than 0.75% of that value, it is important that those limited funds are directed to maximise their benefit.
