Estimating User Costs and Economic Impacts of Roadway Construction in Six Federal Lands Projects

The Federal Lands Highway (FLH) Division staff faces myriad challenges when designing roadway construction projects for roads located on federal lands. An increasingly prevalent challenge is considering not only the “hard” costs of a construction project (e.g., labor and materials) but also the “soft” costs of user delay and the economic impacts on roadway users (e.g., residents, visitors, staff, and local businesses). These soft costs affect every roadway construction project but rarely are considered in design and operation because they often are difficult to estimate and justify. FHWA's 1998 report Meeting the Customer's Needs for Mobility and Safety During Construction and Maintenance Operations identifies this issue and recommends that engineers begin to address it, for small- as well as large-scale projects. As part of its responsibility to promote the development and deployment of applied research, FLH staff initiated the development of FLH-QuickZone to help estimate these soft costs of roadway construction. As part of its development, FLH-QuickZone was tested and prototyped in six FLH construction projects: three in national parks, two on forest highways, and one in a national recreation area. Where FLH-QuickZone fits in a spectrum of other estimation tools for work zone delay and how it was used in the six FLH roadway construction projects are summarized. Observations about the challenge of addressing the soft cost of roadway construction projects–with FLH-QuickZone or other analytical tools–also are presented.