Good Roads Are Good For The Environment

"The European Union Road Federation (ERF), the Brussels Programme Centre of the International Road Federation (IRF), has just published a Discussion Paper titled "Sustainable Roads", advocating for policymakers to acknowledge the fact that carefully planned and built road infrastructure (as well as good maintenance of the one already existing) leads to tangible positive effects for the environment."

"This paper will argue that enormous progress has been made by the road sector and that the technologies are for the most part in place to change the environmental "footprint" of road construction and management while generating new opportunities for road sector stakeholders."

"Using a traffic micro simulation the researchers of the (Norwegian) SINTEF Group, in fact, have shown that road improvements (increase in capacity of the infrastructure) are directly linked to decreases in polluting emissions from motor vehicles. Upgrading a narrow and winding low traffic two-lane road with a modern two-lane one, in fact, yielded a decrease of: 67% in CO emissions, 75% in NOx emissions, 68% in NMVOC emissions and 11% in emissions of CO2. {Editor's note: see related link}."

"The (ERF/IRF) study follows calls by green NGOs to curb the growth in road transport in favour of more sustainable transport systems, notably by spending larger chunks of EU money on rail and public transport, which emit three times less carbon dioxide than cars."

Thanks to Olivier Borie