IMPROVING EVALUATIONS OF THE PROFITABILITY OF ROAD MAINTENANCE OPERATIONS IN EUROPE

The current wave of budget cutbacks sweeping the majority of European countries has incited road network operators to more accurately evaluate the economic profitability of their facilities. This process entails: (1) better supporting budget requests submitted to network oversight authorities or their financial offices, and (2) optimizing both the utilization of maintenance budgets and their breakdown. The implementation of systems for monitoring the pavement condition and, in consequence, the technical impact of the various maintenance strategies as well, constitutes a first step in such an evaluation process. During the past decade, many countries have completed this step, yet actually conducting a maintenance profitability study remains exceptional. Through the PAVECO project, the European Commission has strived to develop technical and economic models capable of being integrated into systems designed to assist road maintenance operations in both Member States and neighboring countries, in the aim of providing network managers with the means for conducting bona fide profitability analyses. A survey carried out among fifteen National Highway Agencies has demonstrated a sufficient level of overlap in the problems encountered and technical approaches employed so that all countries can take advantage of the joint progress achieved. It was also revealed that models created elsewhere in the world, especially in developing countries, were not directly adaptable, since the respective weighting of applicable cost and benefit sources is different in Europe. More specifically, the primary benefit generated by road maintenance operations stems from the impact on capital preservation, given the capital-intensive nature of these facilities. In contrast, the impact of maintenance operations on road use costs is fairly minimal. Lastly, the added costs borne by users as a result of traffic slowdowns caused by maintenance work cannot be overlooked when evaluating the economic profitability of road maintenance from a global perspective. For the covering abstract see ITRD E108018.