1 A ROAD USER COSTS MODEL FOR PORTUGUESE TRUNK ROADS Bertha Santos Department of Civil Engineering, University of Beira Interior Covilhã, Portugal bsantos@ubi.pt (author for contact) Luís de Picado Santos Department of Civil Engineering, University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal picsan@dec.uc.pt Victor Cavaleiro Department of Civil Engineering, University of Beira Interior Covilhã, Portugal cavaleiro@ubi.pt Abstract In road management several Road User Costs (RUC) models have been used. Some of the most important ones were analysed to provide the conceptual basis for a new RUC model for application in Portuguese trunk road net. As in the great majority of the analysed models, three main components of road user costs were considered in the proposed model, namely: vehicle operating costs, accident costs and value of time. Eventually it can also be added a component related with tolling costs. This paper presents the formulation to estimate RUC components suitable to the Portuguese road network; the necessary input values to apply the model (2006 values calibrated through data obtained from transportation associations and companies’ surveys); and, two applications to Portuguese road networks under private concession. The model was developed aiming at simplicity, reduced data requirements (selected data is usually available), easy calibration, easy application and trustworthy results. The main goal was to provide the needed tool to integrate RUC in Portuguese Pavement Management Systems economic analysis considering that, nowadays, no RUC model is being used in Portugal. INTRODUCTION The Road User Costs Model proposed in this paper for Portugal was defined considering several international and Portuguese models available for Road User Costs (RUC) estimation. The reviewed models for the definition of the conceptual basis were: the World Bank HDM-RUE – “Modeling Road User and Environmental Effects in HDM-4” (Bennett et al, 2001) for vehicle operation, accident and time costs model definition; the New Zealand Vehicle Operating Cost Model (NZVOC) that is basically a application of VOC HDM-4 model (Transfund, 2003); the CO st B enefit A nalysis - COBA (Department for Transport et al., 2002) for accident costs