Analysing and comparing different traffic environmental impacts

Abstract

Each human economic activity has the direct goal to help increasing the population quality of life. The developments in the last time did show that beside positive desired effects of these economic activities, also negative undesired effects on the environment and society can appear. With the goal of assuring the sustainable development of our human society it is therefore necessary to recognise, analyse, evaluate and compare these unwanted impacts of technological applications, not only on the environment, but also on the society. Currently there is a debate on a global level regarding the environmental impact assessment of different economic activities. Among these ones the transport field does play an important role concerning its impacts on the environment. Especially traffic engineering, particularly consisting of public and cargo transport, will be approached in the present paper. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a product will be presented, emphasing the emergence of this concept, as well as its usage in the context of different industrial applications. Concretely it will be mentioned that on a global level there is an ISO standard for using and applying the Life Cycle Assessment, that has to be carried out in different stages and for different cycles of a product. Regarding traffic engineering several transport means will be chosen and the pollutants emissions in their utilisation phase will be assessed and compared. Conclusions regarding the Traffic Environmental Impacts will be drawn as well as measures to reduce these impacts will be emphasised.