A Techno- economical Model for Comparison of Highways and Freeways

The optimal section of various road corridors specially freeways an highways, as the main ground transportation routes considering the economic costs of these structures is the main subject of this paper. The paper deals mainly with the costs of construction and utilization of freeways and highways including expenditures relating to infrastructure and pavements of roads, traffic, utilization, travel time, accidents, pay tolls and fuel consumption. The costs and benefits resulted from construction and utilization of these two options is compared separately with the two – lane roads. The obtained result of cost benefit analysis determines the best economic option. Besides the computation of the developed models, the relationship of variables such as road alignment, traffic characteristics, geometric design standards and economic factors were calculated. To evaluate different alternatives, a paired comparison methods as well as he major routes in Iran was chosen for the case study.