Human aspects to low costs roads

This paper discusses the types of costs involved in the construction of low cost roads in Indonesia. The cost categories are : realisation costs, maintenance costs, road user costs and environment costs. The major influences on the realisation costs are from the land used, the design of the road, the equipment used, the labour content involved the construction program carried out and the transportation required. The maintenance costs are costs involved in maintaining a road over a certain period such as: labour costs, drainage costs, materials and equipment required, quality of the road when it was constructed, transport involved for labour, materials and equipment, the required quality standard of maintenance, the supervision and organisation required to perform the maintenance efficiently, the economic costs of maintaining the road (for example due to maintenance, traffic builds up and slows down, lengthening travelling time, creating thus extra costs for the road and volume of traffic that uses the road). Road user costs are influenced by factors such as operating costs involving gasoline, oil, permits, tolls, etc, vehicle maintenance, travel time and safety. Environmental costs are often hard to quantify and some of the factors involved are ecology, traffic, safety and drainage.