Life cycle costing is an explicit method for evaluating the total cost of an asset over its whole life. It is most useful for equipment whose past purchase costs are comparable in real terms to the acquisition price. The application of life cycle costing to bus fleet purchase, replacement, and maintenance costing leads to more efficient resource control and investment management decisions. An overviewof the life cycle costing system is applied to a bus fleet and the inputs needed and outputs available are listed. The technique is applied to a commuter bus company. The application of cross sectional and time series analysis to a partial data base demonstrates how robust results can be obtained from limited information, leading to the identification of significant cost savings in both operating and purchasing decisions. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1266, Urban public transportation research 1990.
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