Life Cycle Cost Analysis of CalME Pavement Design Catalog for Local Government

Pavement design has evolved from traditional empirical methods to mechanistic-empirical design methods. California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the University of California Pavement Research Center (UCPRC) have developed a mechanistic-empirical design method named (CalME). A comprehensive pavement design catalog is needed to help disseminate and implement the newly developed design method at a broader scale, including local government (cities and counties). This study develops a comprehensive catalog of pavement designs generated using the CalME mechanistic-empirical design program. The objective is to provide local government officials with a ready-to-use pavement catalog to simplify their pavement design process. The developed catalog considers variations in climate, traffic, and structural pavement types for different regions in California. To optimize the different pavement designs produced in the catalog and generated using CalME, a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is conducted. The LCCA aims to optimize the pavement design to be more economical over the entire design life. The LCCA accounts for the construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation costs. This study considered three pavement treatment types: preservation only, rehabilitation only, and a combination of preservation and rehabilitation treatments. The preliminary findings of this study show that governmental agencies can make area-specific pavement design decisions and develop an economical maintenance plan covering the pavement's service life. The LCCA results also show that the preservation treatment appears to be the most cost-effective option, with exceptions depending on the traffic index, the preservation treatment type, and the climate zone.