Materials, Methods & Technologies, Volume 1, 2007

Abstract: Road location is the “foundation” of any road. A road constructed in a poor location can fail and cause serious environmental damage, as well as add financial strain from continuous and costly maintenance problems. A road location must be accomplished on the ground, regardless of the procedures used for road construction control (whether direct location or survey) to assure a road can be properly constructed to meet management and environmental objectives. In either method, the goal is to get a road from one point to another in the most efficient manner, with the least amount of earth movement and the least amount of follow-up maintenance and environmental damage, given slope, topography, and ground stability, as well as the operating constraints of the vehicle, such as turning radius and grade. The purpose of planning roads for timber exploitation is to try to achieve the combination of road cost and extraction cost (and sometimes road haulage cost as well) which gives the lowest overall cost of moving timber. There may, of course, be other purposes for roads through woodlands, such as general management, access for sporting and to property beyond the forest edge. Such needs may generally be accommodated within the road system designed for timber extraction.