ANALYSIS INCURRING COST ON USERS IN ROAD TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

Road user costs as one of the factors inherent in the road costs, because of being financed by road users and not the government, are sometimes neglected in Iran during feasibility studies and technical justification of road projects. While this cost could be helpful in the cost-benefit analysis of road project for the selection of optimal option. The cost of road users shall be classified in the following groups: operation vehicle cost, value of time and work zone cost. Therefore, this research aims at estimating the costs of users of Rasht-Qazvin freeway as one of the most important routes of North-South corridor. Following this attempt, operation vehicle costs (VOC) are estimated by collecting traffic and construction information of the target route in line with World Bank models (HDM III, HDM IV). Moreover, Saipa and Iran Khodro models (Advisor software) were used to assess the fuel cost due to the high importance of the problem. Stated Preference method and Eveiws econometric software were also used to approximate the value of time of the people and create the Utility models, respectively. The estimation of the extra consumed resources in the work zone as a result of traffic disruption was preformed while taking advantage of Aimsun simulation software to determine delay and fuel consumption resulting from road closure. Analyzing the data, the cost associated with every single parameter of road users separately and for each of vehicle types are presented. According to the results, depreciation and work zone costs incorporate the highest and the lowest costs imposed on the users, respectively. Furthermore, road user costs in the year of 1393 were approximated around 291.7 Billion Tomans which accounts for roughly 70 percent of the 5-year construction costs of this freeway to which can be paid especial attention in the economic analysis of the road projects.