The impact of maintenance and rehabilitation strategies on the pavement network value

Abstract

The maintenance and rehabilitation of road infrastructure demands a great investment of time and money. The deterioration of pavement condition over time due to environmental factors and increasing traffic loads combined with the limitation of funds available for maintenance and rehabilitation creates a complex problem faced during the fund allocation process. Combinations of alternate funding levels and pavement management policies create different impacts on the network condition and future funding needs. The impacts of such decisions are one of the main concerns at strategic management levels where decisions about pavement maintenance and rehabilitation policies and funding levels are made. Pavement management systems have been used since about 1970 to assist in selecting candidate sections for treatment and identifying cost-effective treatments. Some engineering and economic models compare different maintenance and rehabilitation alternatives considering user costs, including vehicle operating costs, time of travel, and frequency of accidents; as well as agency costs, including maintenance and rehabilitation costs. User benefits are calculated by subtracting the user costs for a given strategy from the user costs from a do nothing strategy. However, these benefits do not necessarily translate into funds available to the agency. An asset management approach to assess the impact of pavement maintenance and rehabilitation scenarios on the pavement network value is presented in this research, and a case study is developed to evaluate the applicability of the method. This approach considers the effects of pavement maintenance and rehabilitation scenarios on the pavement network value in terms of the agency costs needed to recover the value of the asset. Methods for the quantifying the pavement network value over time, estimating agency costs, and analyzing the results are discussed. Results from a case study indicate that the method is able to assess the impact of pavement maintenance and rehabilitation strategies. This approach shows that there is an increase in the agency costs when treatments are delayed due to budget constraints or ineffective agency policies. Guidelines to report the impact of pavement management strategies are also outlined.