User Cost Analysis in Urban Freeway Rehabilitation

Based on the principles and techniques given in the 1977 AASHTO Manual on User Benefit Analysis for Highway and Bus Transit Improvements a simplified procedure utilizes assumptions regarding the characteristics (traffic, alignment, cross section) of typical urban freeways and alternatives associated with their rehabilitation/reconstruction to readily compute user operating costs for such alternatives. Factors of importance which have significant impact on unit operating costs (presence of interchanges, lane reductions, changes in volume to capacity ratios, presence of trucks) are separated from factors which have less of an impact on unit costs (mild grades, curvature). The resulting recommended procedure significantly reduces the number of separate unit cost analyses required for a given alternative. Also given is a means for converting calculated user costs for the first and last years of the improvement's life to a stream of annual costs. This enables computation of benefit-cost ratios using annual values.