Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 3
Comparison of conventional pavement structure (
left
) and perpetual pavement (
right
)
Table 1
Life cycle cost comparison
Construction
cost (million
Can$)
Maintenance and
rehabilitation
(million Can$)
Total cost
(present worth
million Can$)
User delay cost
(million Can$)
Conventional
12.4
4.5
1.3
18.2
Perpetual
13.7
2.3
0.5
16.5
life cycle cost is lower (Table
1
). The user-cost estimates include user delay costs
only (i.e. delay costs and queuing costs) and not vehicle-operating costs.
Reduced Environmental Impacts
To quantify the environmental benefit of perpetual pavement over a traditional
pavement on the RHVP, the Pavement Life-cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental
and Economic Effects (PaLATE) software was used. The program was developed
by Dr. Arpad Horvath from the University of California, Berkeley as a decision-
making tool used to evaluate road construction in terms of life-cycle costing and
environmental impact
[8]
. PaLATE does not take into account vehicle emissions
during the service life. Both, perpetual and traditional pavement designs were com-
pared during the initial construction and maintenance and rehabilitation stages. The
environmental impact includes energy consumption, CO2, NOx, PM10 and SO2
emissions. The results are summarized in Table
2
.
