LIFE-CYCLE COST EVALUATIONS OF THE EFFECTS OF PAVEMENT MAINTENANCE

Several recent trends in highway programs suggest an increasingly important role for maintenance in future pavement management, operations, data collection, and research. The movement toward life-cycle costing as the economic framework for pavement management decisions will cause managers to consider maintenance as one of a spectrum of options available and to evaluate tradeoffs among these alternatives in a more flexible, integrated decision-making process. Furthermore, maintenance is a prime candidate for emerging technologies and research in improved data acquisition and processing, nondestructive testing and evaluation, management of the maintenance function, and materials and equipment needed for maintenance performance. The ways in which the technical, economic, and management aspects of maintenance can be incorporated in life-cycle costing and results of different assumptions in these areas and their implications for pavement performance and costs are explored. A microcomputer-based procedure for pavement life-ycle costing was employed. The program emphasizes pavement policy at the network level and includes an analytic treatment of routine maintenance that accounts for relative levels of effort and the technological effectiveness of maintenance activities, as well as their scheduling and costs. The benefits of maintenance are expressed as reductions in user costs of vehicle operation as a function of pavement condition; the discounted benefits are compared with the discounted costs of maintenance performance to assess the value of different maintenance options and the technological characteristics of maintenance. The findings affirm the substantial benefits of maintenance relative to costs, the benefits of further improvements in maintenance technology, the long-term benefits of early and frequent maintenance, and the need for management decisions to reinforce the inherent technological capabilities of maintenance in correcting pavement condition.