Suitability of pavement type for developing countries from an economic perspective using life cycle cost analysis

Road infrastructure plays a significant role in enriching economy of a developing country. Sustainability of transportation infrastructure aids in this development process, hence road authorities thrive to build roads with longer service life. Bangladesh being a developing country, road maintenance and management task have become a challenge due to tropical weather condition and traffic stream with overloaded vehicles. Flexible pavements constitute most of the pavements in this country, and it has been found that these pavements lose their serviceability at the end of fifth year instead of sustaining for the design period of twenty years. Under such circumstances, rigid pavement can be a possible alternative. In this study, life cycle cost analysis of both rigid and flexible pavements have been performed for a particular case study of Sylhet-Bholaganj Road Project. Future costs have been estimated using growth factor, then all associated costs have been converted to Net Present Value (NPV) to estimate the life cycle cost. The life cycle cost analysis was performed using the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) Schedule of Rates 2015 and 2002 version for performing sensitivity analysis and it has revealed that rigid pavement is economically superior to flexible pavement. The need of frequent periodic maintenance of flexible pavement causes its life cycle cost to increase significantly whereas rigid pavements do not need costly periodic maintenance. Rigid pavements follow the build and forget concept which eventually makes it economically viable and sustainable type of pavement especially for developing countries facing overloading phenomenon under tropical climate.