This Low-Volume Roads Engineering Best Management Practices Field Guide is intended to provide an overview of the key planning, location, design, construction, and maintenance aspects of roads that can cause adverse environmental impacts and to list key ways to prevent those impacts. Best Management Practices are general techniques or design practices that, when applied and adapted to fit site-specific conditions, will prevent or reduce pollution and maintain water quality. BMPs for roads have been developed by many agencies since roads often have a major adverse impact on water quality, and most of those impacts are preventable with good engineering and management practices. Roads that are not well planned or located, not properly designed or constructed, not well maintained, or not made with durable materials often have negative effects on water quality and the environment.

The purpose of this manual is to provide clear and helpful information for maintaining gravel roads. Very little technical help is available to small agencies that are responsible for managing these roads. Gravel road maintenance has traditionally been "more of an art than a science" and very few formal standards exist. This manual contains guidelines to help answer the questions that arise concerning gravel road maintenance such as: What is enough surface crown? What is too much? What causes corrugation? The information is as nontechnical as possible without sacrificing clear guidelines and instructions on how to do the job right.

The progress that has been made in developing the positive guidance concept is documented, and the meaning of positive guidance, the philosophy of driver performance upon which it is based the nature of the driving task at those locations where positive guidance is applicable, and a procedure for its application are discussed. This report describes what must be done to improve the information system at hazardous locations. Positive guidance which is an information system matched to the facility characteristics and driver attributes, is based on the premise that a driver can be given sufficient information where he needs it and in the form that he can best use to avoid hazards.