Influence of traffic delay produced during maintenance activities on the life cycle assessment of a road

This paper analyses the relevance of the traffic delay generated during the A-8 Spanish Motorway maintenance activities in order to make recommendations for inclusion within the LCA of roads. Six congestion scenarios combining the level of service of the Motorway and the alternative N-634 route have been evaluated using two software packages: KyUCP (macro-simulation) and Aimsun (micro-simulation), whose results have been transferred into emissions using MOVES. After performing the LCA considering a functional unit of a 1-km lane with an analysis period of 30 years, results show the huge importance of this stage in all the scenarios analysed.