Economic life cycle of the bus fleet: a case study

The purpose of the paper is to discuss the application of econometric models to life-cycle cost (LCC) of an urban bus fleet with an emphasis on the maintenance costs. The practical results are compared with theoretical ones, which represent a good maintenance and functioning management. The influence of inflation ratio, as well as the price of fuel in the withdrawal time are evaluated. The paper analyses if there is a variation at the time of the vehicle replacement, obtained from several econometric methods namely the annual uniform income and minimisation of the average total cost with reduction to the present value. It also emphasises an eventual relation between the maintenance policy and the reserve fleet, and the relation between maintenance performance and time replacement of bus fleet. Finally, the paper analyses differences between replacement simulations from theoretical econometric models and the same ones applied to real data.