Systematic Procedures for the Analysis of Agency and User Costs of Bridge Repair Actions

A primary goal of bridge management systems is to identify maintenance, repair, and replacement (MR&R) strategies that maximize benefits and minimize losses, often expressed in terms of cost. A major factor that greatly impacts outcomes of these frameworks, that is, the most appropriate MR&R strategies, is the cost of implementation and associated consequences of performing such actions. Given that the inventory of bridges maintained by a state department of transportation (DOT) is significantly large, this study is aimed at developing a systematic procedure to reliably estimate the costs through effective utilization of DOTs’ databases. The considered costs include agency cost of administration, engineering, and mobilization; agency direct cost of performing MR&R actions; agency cost of maintenance of traffic; and user cost incurred from traffic delays, vehicle operation, and excess emissions. The study develops a set of models to estimate the duration of various MR&R work plans. These models are subsequently used to propose analytical formulations and algorithms for the estimation of the above costs. The proposed procedures are employed to estimate the agency and user costs associated with a series of light to extensive repair actions for three bridges in Ohio. Independent calculation of some of these costs by Ohio DOT engineers indicated good agreement with results obtained from the proposed systematic methods. The verified procedures for cost estimation developed in this study enable state DOTs and other entities to reliably estimate implementation costs of actions for their large inventory of bridges and identify the most cost-effective MR&R strategies and work plans.