AN ECONOMIC COMPARISON OF THE ORDINARY AND LOW-NOISE WEARING COURSE DURING THE LIFETIME OF ROADWAY

Abstract

The article is focused on the economic evaluation of ordinary used asphalt pavement SMA 11 and low-noise wearing course SMA 8 NH (NH is an abbreviation for low-noise). This evaluation is based on the construction costs (including laying the asphalt mixture, horizontal road marking, milling works and maintenance – only special for low-noise wearing courses) and external costs during lifetime of the whole road. Needed inputs for external costs are changes of acoustic parameters of road surfaces in the Czech Republic that are verified by the CPX method. The higher the noise, the higher the external costs. Final costs depend also on the lifetime of a wearing course which is approximately 12 years for SMA 11 and 8 years for SMA 8 NH according to Czech long-term knowledge. OTSKP-SPK (which states the average prices of particular works on roads in the Czech Republic) was used for construction costs and “Methodology of traffic noise evaluation” was used for external costs.