The world bank's hdm3 submodel of user costs was applied in the saskatchewan pavement management information system, which integrates agency and user costs into a life-cycle analysis of construction and maintenance strategies for the provincial highway network. Fleet use and cost data were gathered from public sources and from a pilotsurvey of highway users. User-cost--road-roughness equations were developed for nine types of vehicles, for the financial and economic cost cases with and without user delay cost. The cost components of cargo delay and damage need further work. Depreciation, interest, and maintenance costs interplay in vehicle owner decisions and should be reinvestigated. Depreciation and maintenance costs overlap because the costs of repair on factory warranties are included in the purchase price. Available vehicle use data are not clear because of mixed urban/highway travel and distinct use staging of lives of all vehicle types. In speed predictions for trucks, more data are required on payload and used engine power. The road surface texture affects speed prediction and fuel and tire consumption, but its effect on usercosts remains to be clarified. Tire consumption relationships are inappropriate for the radial tire technology. Maintenance parts and labor cost equations can be calibrated with some difficulty. Further research will depend on large-scale surveys, in order to cover a wide range of paved road roughness and texture and to quantify the experimental errors. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1229, Economics, finance, planning, and administration.
Abstract