THE DEGREE OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES IMPLEMENTATION IN TRANSPORTATION BASED ON AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF RAIL BUSES' LIFE CYCLE

The article presents an economic analysis of the life cycle of rail buses. As this analysis part, the costs incurred by the user in the exploitation phase of a rail bus were assessed. The cost estimate was based on the author’s own method of forecasting the exploitation costs of a technical object (e.g. means of transport, equipment, machinery), which takes into account the variability of the costs incurred over time. The article also provides the implementation of the aforementioned method, verifying its practical application when estimating the exploitation costs of technical objects. Experimental verification aimed at assessing the usability of the cost forecasting method is the purpose of this article. The verification was carried out for eight single mode X type rail buses produced by the same manufacturer. The experimental verification of the method used to estimate exploitation costs in the life cycle of objects consisted in: 1. Conducting reliability analysis of the exploitation objects in order to obtain data of technical and economic nature; 2. Entering data into the method and calculating cost forecasts; 3. Assessing correctness of the results. The degree of accuracy of the exploitation cost forecast was measured using ex post relative forecast error. The compatibility analysis of the forecast cost values with the actual ones showed their high compatibility, as evidenced by the level of the estimated relative errors (the average error was 4.9%). Therefore, it can be concluded that the prognostic value of the method is relatively high.