Chapter 15: Environmental Protection

Environmental protection is a major concern of modern societies, and transport is a major source of environmental damage. So it should not be surprising that environmental protection has played a central role in transportation policy and decisions, and that considerable resources have been devoted to mitigating adverse environmental impacts.

Environmental protection can be analyzed from different points of view, including technical, legal, ecological, and political. Here we focus secondarily on engineering and primarily on economic perspectives, with acknowledgment of their shortcomings. The engineer seeks technical solutions and designs technical devices to abate environmrntal damage; the economist seeks the best use of societal resources and identifies actions that yield the highest return for investments and other initiatives.