Development of a New Procedure for Assessing Road Signs Maintenance Priorities for the Tuscan Road Network

Road network safety management is a challenging process for Road Administrations (RAs) in Italy. It requires planning their activities, identifying operational actions, and implementing maintenance activities. For an effective road management system, all these activities should be based on a replicable monitoring procedure which relies on technical criteria to identify critical sites requiring attention. To develop and implement a reliable and effective maintenance strategy, Road Administrations need inexpensive and user-friendly procedures that can be applied to the entire road network. Road signs and road markings plays an important role in providing visual guidance for road users, which in turn influences road safety. This paper proposes and discusses a standardized and systematic monitoring procedure for the condition assessment of road signs and markings. The procedure will be applied to identify damaged, old, or unreadable signs and markings and a section of a two-way two-lane rural road has been used to test and calibrate the proposed procedure.