The purpose of this document is to maintain and improve the validity and harmonisation of estimates of non-urban road user costs (RUCs) in Australia. Australian road agencies use a range of models to estimate RUC’s for use in investment evaluation, based on the Australian NIMPAC and the World Bank HDM models. Austroads developed a “harmonisation” process for estimating non-urban RUCs in the mid 1990’s as a result of concern that different approaches and procedures could generate significantly different RUC estimates. Harmonisation in this context is a process to ensure that the different methods and models used to estimate RUC’s return similar unit RUC estimates when applied to scenarios in which infrastructure and traffic characteristics are specified in detail. The prime aim of this document is to update the information presented in ARR 279 (Thoresen and Roper 1996), which summarised the results of Austroads research in the early 1990s and provided a basis for harmonisation. In addition, additional algorithms and procedures developed since 1996 are described. This document presents algorithms and parameter values for estimates of travel speed, fuel and oil usage, tyre wear, vehicle repair and maintenance costs, travel time costs, and depreciation and interest costs, as these are the main components in RUC models in use in Australia. For each component, algorithms and parameter values in this document are linked to the RUC estimation models used by the major Australian road agencies and the wide range of infrastructure and traffic variables used in these models. This document contains key specifications and associated harmonised parameter values for 22 vehicle stereotypes, including cars, freight vehicles (rigid, articulated and combination), and large buses. Austroads separately periodically updates and publishes input prices and costs for harmonised estimation of RUCs. (Author/publisher)
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