Analysing and comparing different traffic environmental impacts

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.