Assessment of pavement rehabilitation impact on the user costs : a portuguese case study

Abstract

Road Rehabilitation inevitably implies delays in the normal traffic flow and added costs to the users. Therefore, the user costs resulting from the rehabilitation works should be taken into consideration in the rehabilitation project phase together with the construction costs. A high-quality technical solution should not only assure a good performance of the pavement during its life period, but also minimize the duration of the works in order to reduce the impact on the costs imputed to the road users and the impact on the environment by reducing CO2 emissions. The present paper focuses on the analysis of a road rehabilitation project (a national road linking a major city to a medium city) where the user costs were not considered in the design phase. Based on existing Road User Cost models and on the measurements carried out “in situ”, the impact of the rehabilitation operations on the users was determined for two different situations (implying closure of one traffic lane in sections with only one lane in each direction, and in sections with an additional lane in one direction). User costs were estimated for a period of 8 hours during which works were being carried out.