Abstract:
The road condition from Alemgena to Wolaita Sodo corridor is fair to the poor condition
which is highly deteriorated. Therefore, the corridor needs high maintenance, and
rehabilitation works were needed. But Ethiopian Road Authority (ERA) was working the
least cost routine maintenance which leads to high road user costs. Since the application
for the economic evaluation of Road agency and road user costs for decision making is
very limited, and the consideration in an economic evaluation of road user costs has been
neglected most of the time in life cycle cost analysis.
The primary goal of this research is to evaluate the least total transportation cost by
applying different maintenance standards and based on the result to select the least total
transportation cost of pavement maintenance standard for pavement preservation. The
Highway Development and Management (HDM-4) software was employed to calculate
the costs by using localized data. The data such as the road network characteristics, the
road users’ information, and maintenance standards for candidate road sections were
defined, and finally, Economic analysis by using section analysis was taken. To achieve
the objective of the study descriptive type of research is used to indicate current
situations. The qualitative data was used to show the selected conditions of the road
network and traffic conditions and quantitative data was used on the numerical values
involved in HDM-4 software.
From the finding of the study Annual Road agency and users cost streams, it can be
concluded that the implementation of Project case alternative 1(routine maintenance
plus surface dressing and overlay) maintenance work standards was expense least total
transportation cost in each road sections.
