2014 - USA - Estimating the Marginal Cost of Pavement Damage by Users

Highway agencies worldwide strive to ensure that highway users pay fees that not only recover the costs of pavement damage but also are equitable. In addressing the limitations of past research and quantifying the resulting adverse consequences on their analysis outcomes, this paper presents a comprehensive framework to derive more representative estimates of pavement damage cost. The developed framework incorporates practical pavement repair schedules that include all the key repair categories as a basis for estimating the marginal pavement damage cost (MPDC). The framework was applied to pavements of different surface type, functional class and age. On average, the MPDC was found to range from $0.0032 per ESAL-mile on Interstate highways to $0.1124 per ESAL-mile on non-national highways. It was determined that in each highway functional class, the marginal cost of pavement damage is influenced significantly by the pavement material type, traffic levels and age. Within any specific functional class, it was determined that the marginal cost increases with increasing traffic level and pavement age. The study also determined that non-consideration of at least one key repair category such as reconstruction or routine maintenance leads to significant (27–45%) underestimation of the actual MPDC.