UNIT.

1
Basically RUC is composed of the three main components namely Vehicle Operating Cost (VOC), Time
cost and Accident cost.

Road User Cost:

Vehicle operating cost ;
1.Fuel And Lubricants Costs
2.Spare Part Cost
3.Tyre Cost
4.Maintenance LabourCost
5.Fixed Cost
6.Crew Cost
7.Depreciation Cost
8.Commodity Cost

Time cost;
1.Value Of Occupation Time
2.Value Of Goods In Transit
3.Value Of Time Of Commercial Vehicle

Accident cost;
1.Cost Of Human Fatal Accident
2.Loss Due To Injury
3.Cost Of Hospitalization
4.Damage To Property Vehicle

TRAVEL TIME COSTS;

Travel Time Costs (TTC) also referred to as Values of Time are an important component of road user costs. The concept of travel
time costs is based around the premise that time spent in traveling has an opportunity cost and could be used in an alternative
activity which also produce or may produce some significant utility popularly known as benefit. If the alternative activity can have a
monetary value assigned to it this can be used as a part of RUC in the economic appraisal of projects, particularly of the transport
projects having relation with consumption of time in the use of their output.
TTC may vary from country to country, even from project to project in the same country. This can vary in size from 20 percent of total
RUC to over 80 percent of the same in the economic and/or financial appraisal of schemes depending on the extent of time delays
involved in case of the project under study as well as the income pattern of the users of the project output. In case
of the construction of a major new bridge to replace a ferry for example, TTC will be immensely significant compared to a road
improvement project without any change in its alignment or pavement and/or shoulder capacity. Again, value of time will be much
higher in a more developed country like the USA or Britain than that in a less developed country like Bangladesh
or Afganistan. Similarly this variation in value of time may exist between a more developed region or society of a country and a
relatively less developed part or habitation of the same country.
Time costs can be estimated for road users and for freight consignments. Costs may be broken down into in vehicle time and out
of vehicle time. The latter may be important to bus passengers waiting for a vehicle, but is specialized in its application and is not
considered in the LGED approach which focuses on in vehicle time'' values only. Time costs will vary between different vehicle
types according to the socio-economic characteristics of the occupants, their trip purpose and the type of freight carried. For
analysis purposes TTC are expressed as hourly values per vehicle by assuming average occupancies
and loading factors for each vehicle type. Although every vehicle or category of vehicles will have its own total TTC it is sometimes
considered appropriate to apply a uniform TTC across all vehicle types to avoid biasing investment towards roads with a dominance
of one type of user over another (i.e. a road with many high income car users will generate much higher time savings than a road
with many low value rickshaw users: a scenario typically prevailing in Bangladesh). In this case of uniform application the TTC is
referred to as an equity value. This approach is appropriate mainly for the developed country as income distribution in such
country is more or less smooth and even. Users of cars and bicycles may belong to the same economic class as most of them own
and use both of the vehicles to suit the convenience of their movement. In a country like Bangladesh on the contrary, the income
pattern between the users of highly expensive motorised vehicles such as cars and jeeps and those of slow moving non-motorised
transport such as rickshaws and bicycles is substantially different and these two categories of road users belong to two completely
different economic classes in the society. That's why the approach of uniform TTC has not been adopted in Bangladesh to date. In
this study TTC has been estimated according to separate vehicle type.

ACCIDENT COSTS;
In this analysis, accident means road accident and accident costs refer to the costs borne by the economy due to occurrence of a
road accident. Research carried out so far has shown that the economic value of road accident costs can easily be equivalent to
around one per cent of a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a significant drain on any country's resources. In

addition to the overall impact of Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) on the national economy, estimates of accident costs are also needed
to measure the safety impacts of road and bridge schemes. The main objective of most road improvement works is to reduce
vehicle operating costs and journey time costs, which is achieved by reducing road surface roughness and most
often increasing vehicle speeds.Increased speeds may increase the number and severity of accidents. It is therefore vital to
include the cost of accidents in road project appraisals as the failure to do so may result in Increased loss of life and economic
output.
There are two basic methodologies of costing accidents. They are the Lost Output (or human capital) approach and the
Willingness to Pay (WTP) approach. Lost Output focuses on the economical consequences of road accidents but also includes a
component for the pain, grief and suffering (PGS) caused by road accidents. The WTP method, on the other hand, considers
the value of preventing an accident, i.e. how much people would pay to avoid an accident altogether. This approach produces much
higher cost estimates than the Lost Output Method. WTP has only been used in motorized countries, while the Lost Output method
has traditionally been recommended for motorising countries whose primary objective is maximisation ofnational economic growth.
Our approach is based on the Lost Output method. The methodology follows an established procedure. A conservative
approach was adopted as several parameters require additional research to arrive at more accurate values.This additional research
is time taking and resource consuming. If necessary time and resources are available further action will be taken in future studies to
accomplish this task.

VEHICLE OPERATING COSTS;

The prediction of vehicle operation cost (VOC) is a complex procedure, as costs of all relevant components of the vehicle are
needed for the entire Bangladesh vehicle fleet consisting of a plethora of vehicle types. Moreover, the variation of these costs under
different operating conditions must also be understood. These operating conditions are normally categorised as:
Horizontal curvature
Vertical curvature
Road Surface Condition
Traffic Congestion

Tyre Costs
Tyres are imported from India, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan with Indian tyres dominating the market mainly because they
are relatively cheaper. The use of re-treaded tyres is common, as is shown in Table 4.9. Although the usage has significantly been
increased from 20 to 57% in case of medium truck with an associate fall in prices. Table 4.10 sets out a breakdown of new tyre
prices for each of the representative vehicle types.

Vehicle Maintenance Policies and Costs

The majority of the operators interviewed maintained their own vehicles as shown in Table4.12. But the trend to maintain the vehicle
in garage is increasing. Most operators usually prefer to service their vehicles on a time related basis, with some exception in case
of small & medium truck and jeep.
The annual costs of maintaining the representative vehicles were estimated from the operators surveys and are set out in Table
4.13. Costs are highest for large buses, which appear to be realistic from the point of view of their high utilization. The average
maintenance labour cost per month is around Taka 14,000 for all vehicles, assuming a 200 working hours per month, the average
financial cost per hour stands for Taka 70 and economic Taka 56.

Crew Costs
Nearly all trucks and buses have a permanent helper in addition to the driver. The costs of drivers and helpers for buses are based
on two crews per vehicle.

ROAD USER BENEFITS

Since road user benefits accrue to both beneficiaries of road improvements and transit projects,it would be helpful
to look at these in a little more depth. Much work has been done in attempting to quantify these benefits. The major
work in this area is the AASHTO Red Book of 1977. This work is currently being updated by NCHRP Project 02-23,
which should be released some time in 2003.An important category of road user benefits is decreases in motor
vehicle operating costs.These costs can be reduced by transportation improvements through a decrease in the
consumption of fuel and oil, a reduction in tire wear, a decrease in maintenance and repairs,and a reduction in
ownership costs. These operating costs differ for different types and conditions of roadway. Some of the more
relevant factors that the analyst should take into consideration when measuring these operating costs are the
number and arrangements of lanes, the type of roadway surface, the amount of grade along a road, the average
running speed, the traffic volume, the alignment of the roadway, and whether the roadway is located in a rural or
an urban area.

Fuel Consumption
One of the largest single components of vehicle operating cost is fuel consumption. Not all highway improvements
will cause a decrease in this cost. Fuel consumption is affected by frequency of accelerations, grades, road
roughness, horizontal curvature, operating speeds, and congestion, among other factors. Generally, roadimprovement projects that cause free-flowing average speeds to increase above 35 mph will cause fuel
consumption to increase. This increase in speed will, however, produce time savings. Thus, there exists a trade-off
between these two types of user costs.There exist many other trade-offs as well in transportation project appraisal.
Thus, the analyst cannot really be certain that an improvement that reduces a few elements of cost will actually be
the best improvement to make. It could be that other costs are increased so much that they far outweigh the
savings produced by the given improvement. This example serves to emphasize that all the relevant costs and

benefits should be taken into account in any project appraisal study. If only those elements of cost that are reduced
are examined, the analyst
may conclude that a given improvement is best or acceptable when in fact it is not.

Tire Wear, Oil Consumption, and Maintenance Costs

The effects of transportation improvements on tire wear, oil consumption, and vehicle maintenance costs have for
the most part not been firmly established. The type of roadway surface, route shortening, and type of operation are
the only factors that have been established as affecting one or more of these cost elements. Tire wear increases
with surface roughness, wear being less for paved than for gravel surfaces. It also increases with increased stop and
go driving. These same factors may also affect oil consumption and maintenance costs,although the effects are not
well established.

Vehicle Ownership Costs

Vehicle ownership costs include garage rent, taxes, licenses, insurance, interest, and time depreciation. These costs
are constant throughout the year regardless of vehicle use. If a transportation improvement, such as a light rail
system, results in a reduction in the number of vehicles that are owned, then these costs will be affected.Time
depreciation is independent of vehicle use and is only a function of age. Another type of deprecation is that which is
related to vehicle use. There is not much agreement in
the literature as to all the factors that affect depreciation due to use, nor is there much agreement as to the
percentage of total depreciation that should be attributed to time and use depreciation.

Time Savings
Another benefit that may accrue to road users is a reduction in travel time. Although it is no easy task in itself to
measure the time savings in minutes or hours, there exists a much more conceptually difficult problem. This is the
placing of some dollar value on the savings. Vehicles are usually divided into passenger cars and commercial
vehicles. Separate values of time are calculated for each class of vehicle. Some authors also have tried to estimate
the value of travel time to commuting motorists. The value of time varies with the purpose of use. Thus, the value
of time for commuting motorists may differ from the value of time for
leisure driving.One problem with valuation of time savings concerns aggregation of such savings. Suppose a
highway improvement results in a time savings of 1 minute per motorist. When the minute is then summed for all
vehicles, 365 days a year, for the life of the project, it would seem that a very substantial savings would result. But
what is the real value of a 1-minute savings per trip? For most vehicles, this savings has little or no value. However,
if the 1-minute savings is then added to time savings from other transportation projects, a savings of a considerable
block of time can result. There are various ways that the analyst may go about placing a value on time savings.The
revenue and the cost savings methods are two means frequently used to value the time
savings of commercial vehicles.

Cost of Accidents
Another road user cost that can be reduced by transportation improvement projects is the cost of accidents. The
analyst faces two rather difficult problems in attempting to use the cost of accidents in the analysis.The first
problem involves the difficulty in obtaining statistically significant estimates of how much a given project will affect
accident rates.The second problem involves attaching some dollar estimates to the cost of accidents. This latter
problem is taken up in this chapter. The usual method of placing a value on the cost of accidents involves
enumeration of all costs associated with various types of accidents. The costs usually enumerated are the socalled
direct costs of a given type of accident. These direct costs are then estimated for the various accidents that occur in
the geographic area that the analyst studies during a given time period. Some average value is then formulated for
the costs of each type of accident.
Most studies classify accidents by severity. Thus, the usual estimates of the costs of accidents
are presented as the cost of:
1. Property-damage-only accidents
2. Nonfatal injury accidents
3. Fatal accidents
Some approaches break down injury accidents into categories of severity.
The direct costs of accidents include:
Damage to the vehicle itself
Damage to property outside the vehicle
Damage to other vehicles
Cost of ambulance service
Hospital and treatment services
Funeral costs
Value of work time lost
Present value of the loss of future earnings by those fatally injured or impaired
Other costs