Life cycle environmental benefits of pavement surface maintenance

Abstract

To achieve sustainable road networks, long-term environmental costs and benefits should be recognized and incorporated in the decision making process of pavement management units. This paper provides an assessment of life cycle environmental benefits of pavement maintenance and discusses their incorporation in pavement management systems (PMS). A case study regarding a 1 km long section of an urban collector road shows that pavement surface maintenance provides environmental benefits ranging from $700 000 to $18 000 000 over a 40 year analysis period, depending on the maintenance treatment applied and the discount rate used. Preventive maintenance was found clearly more sustainable than corrective maintenance. Noise benefits represented the major component of the environmental benefits. Reversely, although pavement management practices often consider greenhouse gases, the results show that the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions due to pavement management strategies is minimal. The paper also discusses the incorporation of environmental costs in pavement management practices and highlights the importance of an appropriate discount rate, specific to environmental impacts and the need to assess the influence of the discounting method on the environmental benefits.