Measuring dynamic efficiency of highway maintenance operations

In this paper we discuss a dynamic efficiency measurement model for evaluating the performance of highway maintenance policies where the inter-temporal dependencies between consumption of inputs (i.e., maintenance budget) and realization of outputs (i.e., improvement in road condition) are explicitly captured. We build on a micro representation of pavement deterioration and renewal processes and study the impact of the allocation of scarce maintenance budgets over time. We provide a measure of efficiency that contrasts the optimized budget allocations to the actual ones. The developed model is then applied to an empirical dataset of pavement condition and maintenance expenditures over the years 2002 to 2008 corresponding to seventeen miles of interstate highway that lay in one of the counties in the state of Virginia, USA. The policies that were found through optimization showed that road authorities should give higher priorities to preventive maintenance than corrective maintenance. In essence, by applying preventive maintenance, the road authorities can effectively decrease the need for future corrective maintenance while spending less overall.