Life cycle cost comparison of highways with perpetual and conventional pavements

Introduction of perpetual pavement in the late 1990s provided the possibility of constructing a pavement with higher initial investment expenditure but lower maintenance and user costs. Life cycle cost (LCC) of a facility is the sum of all one-time and recurring costs over the full life span of that facility. As for highways, it includes agency costs (initial construction and maintenance costs), user costs (vehicle operation and time value costs), social costs (environmental costs) and salvage value at the end of pavement design life which is considered as a negative cost. This study compares the LCC of highways with conventional and perpetual pavements to figure out which system is economically preferred in various traffic and weather conditions for Iranian highways. Results of the study show that perpetual pavement construction can save LCC of pavements in the range of 4-20%.