Towards optimal life cycle management in a road maintenance setting using DEA

This paper focuses on local road aspects of the highway system and aims to assess how efficiently, effectively and economically the 73 Territorial Local Authorities (TLAs) in New Zealand have maintained their respective local road networks from a life cycle perspective. Measures of quality, quantity and cost, together with nondiscretionary measures of environmental factors, are incorporated in Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate each TLA’s performance in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and economy. TLAs that have high performance on all three measures provide a best practice indication of the optimal maintenance activity mix to undertake. In this study, the best practice mix of expenditure is 59% routine maintenance, 27% resealing and 14% rehabilitation.