Regional road optimization cost management in Czechia: critical factors and technological challenges
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Central European Public Administration Review |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | Central European Public Administration Review |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.17573 |
| Keywords | road management; regional roads; RAP; critical cost factors; modernisation; planning; transportation |
| Description | Our article addresses road cost management at the regional level, which is less studied than local roads or highways. The study aims to identify critical urban long-term factors leading to higher regional road management costs and to propose a financially sustainable strategy for road network reconstruction using different reclaimed asphalt pavement materials (RAP). Using STEP-WISE and ENTER regression analysis with data on road quality and maintenance cost in Czechia, the study considers factors like elevation, slope, population, and density changes. Results highlight that the slope and road class corresponding with the disconnectivity of the road network increases road maintenance costs. Thus, the network renewals implemented in compact sets of roads can significantly decrease costs. On the contrary, population and density have only minimal impact on long-term costs. Furthermore, we aim to define scenarios to reduce costs using RAP materials and determine potential cost savings on the example of regional roads in Czechia. Scenarios showed potential savings of nearly EUR 27 million per region with RAP use. In practice, we show that using RAP materials can enable infrastructure managers to renew more than one-third of roads yearly compared to conventional mixes, or it can increase the frequency of restoring the road sections with lower quality from 3 years to 2.25 years. Our article contributes to bringing new insights into factors determining regional road-level costs. We prove that using RAP materials in regional road management can positively affect the potential frequency of road revitalisation. |
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