Road Cost Models for Prefeasibility Studies in Developing Countries

Abstract

In the early estimation there is compromise between the amounts of information available and accuracy of estimation. We propose three levels of analysis such as regional, country and project level for road cost models in order to provide efficient data usage. The data for our research was obtained from the World Bank’s Road Costs Knowledge System database, which contains unit costs for road projects from over 80 developing countries. This paper investigates the impact of road upgrading and improvement works on overland trade in 18 out of 32 member countries of Asian Highway Network. The results indicated approximately $6.5 billion is required to upgrade roads and improve existing surface condition of the selected subnetwork with total length of 15,842 km. The gravity model approach was adopted to quantitatively evaluate overland trade expansion taking into account road quality improvements with two scenarios such as road quality increases up to 50% in the first scenario in the second one up to 75%. The results suggests that in the first scenario total intraregional trade will increase about 20% to $48.7 billion annually, while second scenario predicts that trade will increase by about 35% to $89.5 billion annually.