The highway maintenance and operations cost index, published annually by fhwa, was established in its current form in 1947 and has not been revised since. The purpose of this study was to evaluate theprocedures used to develop the index, and to consider the feasibility of options--retaining it in its current form, revising, redeveloping, or discontinuing the index. This study included several tasks: a literature review of the theoretical aspects of price index development; a detailed survey of state department of transportation needsfor the index, current uses, relationship to maintenance operations, preferences for change, and assessments of the utility of different options; a detailed review of other construction and maintenance indexes and related cost data; analyses of current maintenance index behavior, and coparison with construction indexes of various types;and recommendations to fhwa regarding the future of the index. On the basis of the findings of this study, the most favorable option isindex redevelopment. A revised index will require collaboration between fhwa and the states for the critical tasks of identifying candidate items of labor, equipment, and materials for a simpler market basket; actually defining and building the market basket; redesigningforms (with clearer instructions) for states' submission of data; creating the weighting functions to translate state unit cost data into regional and national composites; and defining the regions that are to be encompassed. Furthermore, this collaboration must continue on a long-term basis to review the index periodically and revise it as needed. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1268, Highway maintenance operations and research 1990.
Samenvatting