University of California Transportation Center

This paper focuses on the estimation of highway maintenance marginal costs. Highway maintenance marginal cost has been estimated in the literature using the perpetual overlay indirect approach. This approach assumes that pavement overlay costs dominate maintenance costs and ignores other maintenance activities. This paper focuses on two questions. First, is it acceptable to ignore the less costly activities? Second, if multiple maintenance activities are to be considered, is it acceptable to ignore their interdependence? The results show that less costly maintenance activities cannot be ignored. Furthermore, if multiple activities are to be considered, their interdependence should be taken into account.