This paper presents an economic assessment of whole life costs of concrete pavements based on calculations from a whole life cost model for concrete pavements which has been developed for unreinforced, continuously reinforced, jointed reinforced and rigid composite pavements. Maintenance interventions are time dependent and costs include maintenance treatments, traffic control, delays and accidents. Using estimates for maximum and minimum values of the model's parameters, the sensitivity of the whole life cost to traffic, discount rate, maintenance frequency and duration for the dual 3-lane motorway was examined. For high traffic growth and maximum maintenance costs, the lowest whole life cost was given by the maximum design considered of 80 years but there was not a positive return on initial investment when using design lives longer than 40 years. For low traffic growth and minimum maintenance costs the optimum design life has less than 40 years. The results of the analysis were insensitive to changes in the discount rate.
Abstract