Efficiency Measurement of Highway Maintenance Strategies Using Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper provides an application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to the measurement of the relative efficiency of highway maintenance operations within 200 miles of Virginia’s Interstate highways maintained by VDOT using traditional maintenance practices and 250 miles of Virginia’s Interstate highways maintained via a PPP (Public Private Partnership) using a performance-based maintenance strategy over the fiscal years 2003 to 2007. Selection of controllable and uncontrollable factors that are appropriate for the evaluation of efficiency performance is discussed. Regression analysis, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and an environmental classification method are utilized in conjunction with DEA to account for the impact of uncontrollable factors. The findings show that the traditional highway maintenance approach can be as efficient as the performance-based approach.