RESEARCH FINDINGS ON ROAD COSTS TRADEOFFS REVEALED IN BRAZIL

In one of the largest highway research projects ever undertaken-spanning almost a decade with costs of nearly US$30 million-the Government of Brazil sought to quantify on a more rigorous basis than heretofore possible the basic physical and economic relationships which underlie benefit-cost analysis of alternative highway design and maintenance standards. Based on carefully thought out experimental designs, the project resulted in a massive and fundamentally new data base from which two key sets of relationships have been established: (i) vehicle speeds and operating costs (under predominantly free flowing conditions-congestion was not a focus of the research), and (ii) road deterioration, both as related to road design and maintenace standards. In the area of vehicle operating costs, the research encompassed three complementary components: (i) observations of vehicle speeds under normal usage for a stratified sample of the road network; (ii) controlled experiments to establish fuel consumption speed relations as a function of road characteristics, and (iii) a user cost survey collecting records overtime from large numbers of vehicle operators, for all operating cost components, stratified by road characteristics. In the area of road deterioration the research employed a hybrid research methodlogy encompassing both (i) a cross-section sample of road sections at different stages of life and (ii) time series observations under normal traffic usage for (an initial) four-year period. Both paved and unpaved roads were studied. (Author)

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  • Accession Number: 00396373
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Feb 28 2000 12:00AM