Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Pavement Interventions

Decision makers are always faced with the challenge of selecting and implementing cost-effective pavement preservation alternatives, particularly when encountering shrinking budgets and increased competition for funds. Pavement intervention and investment evaluation criteria used in past research and practice are reviewed. The synthesis of pavement preservation effectiveness and efficiency evaluation techniques that is presented is unique from both benefit and cost perspectives. Criteria are of the following categories: effectiveness (benefit) only, cost only, cost-effectiveness, and economic efficiency. Computational details, past applications, merits, and demerits of various evaluation criteria are discussed for each criterion. Then selected criteria are computed with data from a national pavement study; they are used to evaluate alternative rigid pavement rehabilitation treatments. The case study results suggest that the superior short-term effectiveness exhibited by a treatment does not necessarily translate into superior long-term effectiveness. The evaluation results can vary widely for cost only, effectiveness only, and both cost and effectiveness criteria. Thus, evaluation based on cost-only or effectiveness-only criteria can yield biased evaluation results. To be a suitable candidate, a treatment or strategy must be not only effective but also cost-effective and economically efficient and the incorporation of user costs into evaluation can significantly influence the evaluation results. Such a synthesis can be a vital support for highway agencies in decision making for infrastructure management in general and pavement management in particular.