Explore pavement roughness under various funding for the Taiwan provincial highways using LCCA

Pavement roughness has always been a concern for road users and highway agencies. The Directorate General of Highways (DGH), which administers the Taiwan Provincial Highways, stated that the maintenance lane-kilometres it manages increase daily. In recent years, the Taiwan government has been investing a great deal of money in social and health care services while decreasing annual funding for infrastructure. DGH is no exception to these budget-cutting efforts and now faces the challenge of how to maintain an acceptable level of pavement roughness with limited funding. With this challenge in mind, the main objective of this study was to explore pavement roughness under various maintenance funding levels for the Taiwan Provincial Highway. First, the researchers visited all five Taiwan pavement maintenance offices and several branches to collect roughness data, annual financial reports and expert opinions. Then, life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA), specifically RealCost LCCA software was used to estimate an annual minimum budget for DGH. Taiwan local and typical data were used in this analysis. The results of the LCCA conducted in this study indicated that DGH should be spending a minimum of 5.2 billion NTD per year on pavements to keep them in good condition.