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Maintenance Cost Study and Landscape & Aesthetics Cost Manual
Project Background

            In May 2000, the Nevada State Transportation Board and the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) embarked on a master planning process to create a vision for Nevada’s state highway system and to satisfy a need for improved landscape and aesthetic policies, guidelines, practices, procedures, and standards. As part of this process, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Landscape Architecture and Planning Research Office signed an interlocal agreement with NDOT to research L&A programs across the country and prepare a master plan. In 2002, Pattern and Palette of Place: A Landscape and Aesthetics Master Plan of the Nevada State Highway System was adopted (see http://www.nevadadot.com/pub_involvement/landscape/).

The NDOT Landscape and Aesthetics Master Plan outlined a process for ensuring that landscape and aesthetic issues are considered in all phases of highway planning, design and construction. Maintenance costs are an integral part of managing landscape and aesthetic treatments in the highway right-of-way.

The main purpose of The Maintenance Cost Study for Corridor Planning and the Landscape & Aesthetics Maintenance Cost Manual is to provide a tool to understand, compile, and track landscape maintenance costs on NDOT’s Landscape and Aesthetics Program. Currently, there is no consistent manner of gathering the information.

In the Maintenance Cost Study, current available maintenance cost information was evaluated for projects similar to those recommended by the Landscape and Aesthetic Master Plan and corridor plans. The costs are used to develop a baseline standard of maintenance performed by NDOT and to compare the cost of standard levels of maintenance to those required for a range of landscape and aesthetic treatments.

The main components are:

• A set of tasks and costs that are the NDOT standard for maintenance of all highway rights-of-way;
• Recommended improvements for tracking maintenance costs;
• Tasks and costs associated with the addition of landscape and aesthetic treatments;
• A basis for estimating planning-level costs for use in corridor planning, project design, and maintenance contracts.

In the Landscape and Aesthetics Maintenance Cost Manual, data from the study is
Presented in a concise manner to allow NDOT to train maintenance managers to correctly identify projects and track maintenance cost data for future planning.

Tracking maintenance costs provides valuable information for planning and design of new construction, capacity improvements, and retrofit projects. The ability to predict maintenance costs before construction, and manage them after construction, gives NDOT a way to balance the desire for aesthetic effect with a need to find cost effective landscape and aesthetic designs for all highway projects