Influence of Pavement Maintenance Strategy on Road Traffic Social and Environmental Impacts and Associated Costs

To achieve sustainable road networks, long-term social and environmental costs and
benefits related to traffic emissions should be recognized and considered in the decisionmaking
process of pavement management units. PEIM, a new tool designed to monetize
and incorporate social and environmental impacts in decision-making processes, was used
to assess the life cycle social and environmental benefit, related to traffic emissions (noise,
air pollutants, and greenhouse gases), that is provided by pavement management. A case
study regarding a 1 km long section of an urban collector road located in Montreal is
presented in this paper. The results show that pavement surface maintenance provided an
estimated social and environmental benefit ranging from $700 000 to $18 100 000 over a 40
year analysis period, depending on the maintenance treatment applied and the discount
rate. Despite uncertainties, the results unambiguously show that this benefit was the same
order of magnitude as the maintenance costs. As such, this benefit deserves to be
incorporated in the life cycle assessment of pavement maintenance strategies. Whatever the
maintenance strategy, most of the social and environmental benefit was associated with
noise, while those associated with greenhouse gases were minimal. Preventive
maintenance was found clearly more sustainable than corrective maintenance. The study
also points out the necessity to take into account the influence of the discounting method
when assessing the social and environmental benefit.