Evaluation of Work Zone Road User Cost of Pavements Based on Rehabilitation Strategy Approach

Abstract

Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is a common tool to select road pavement type. In the pavement type selection process, most government agencies consider the costs of initial construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation; however, user costs are rarely considered. In this paper, work zone road user costs (WZ RUC) are estimated based on the rehabilitation strategies of the pavement types. Also, the implementation timing of the rehabilitation activities, which lead to the lowest user costs, is determined as the lowest WZ RUC strategy. Due to uncertainty in timing of the rehabilitation activities, the program evaluation and review technique (PERT) and fuzzy logic are used to evaluate WZ RUC in rehabilitation strategies. The service life of pavement types is used to determine the probability of occurrence and membership degree of the lowest WZ RUC strategy. According to the proposed methodology and using the rehabilitation strategies, WZ RUC of a project with four types of pavements, including hot mix asphalt (HMA), stone mastic asphalt (SMA), jointed plain concrete pavement (JPCP), and continuous reinforced concrete pavement (CRCP), are evaluated and the best alternative is proposed. Due to the importance of uncertainty in the rehabilitation strategy to estimate the user costs, the proposed method may be employed to select the best pavement type, especially when the agency life cycle costs of pavement types are almost equal.