Talk:Environmental impact of roads

Let's talk about roads and not cars
Aside from the section on habitat fragmentation most of this article is focusing on the Environmental impacts of motor vehicles which is obviously covered by other articles. It's important distinction because roads are not only used by cars and so the negative aspects of cars on roads may not apply to other vehicles on the road e.g bicycles. The Environmental impact of roads themselves should be things like : road construction negative impacts. The materials that roads are made of that could have negative Environmental impacts. More talk about habitat disruption and the effects on the movements of animals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoshuaPickett (talk • contribs) 04:18, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

New article
New article created from section in the Road article as per discussion on talk:Road. PeterEastern (talk) 06:06, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Scope
I suggest that the primary focus of this article is on the direct environmental impacts of road construction (water, noise, habitat disruption, heat islands, quarrying for materials etc) and then also the secondary effects from the use of the roads (emissions from vehicles, opening up access into forest area promoting logging, noise from vehicles, cultural interference). PeterEastern (talk) 07:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

NPOV
I note that currently only negative environmental impacts of roads have been included. It is a very new article, and obviously needs time to develop, so let's hope that the addition of the essential balance will begin to appear very soon. I'll see if I can find time to assist with this activity. -- de Facto (talk). 15:06, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't think of the positive environmental impact of roads. Although the positive impact of roads is huge.  Example is the lower cost of trade, and positives due to in person interaction. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 15:38, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I created the article as part of broader work on Road and Highway articles and the current conent is pretty much a clone of the content from the Roads article for what it's worth. I suggest that the scope of the article should be limited primarily to the direct environmental impacts of roads and their use rather than the impacts (good and bad) of people traveling from one place to another on them. For example the fact that environmentalists use them to get to meetings is out of scope as is the fact that the availability of roads can increase the level of illegal logging in places. Just a suggestion. Anyway... if anyone is able to seek out the environmental benefits of roads and their use them DeFacto is our man ;) PeterEastern (talk) 17:01, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes - as per the article title - the "environmental impacts". Wiki policy dictates a neutral POV for articles, so positive environmental impacts need to be addressed too. -- de Facto (talk). 20:44, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Would it be more accurate to talk about mitigation or reduction of negative impacts, rather than positive impacts? For example, capacity improvements may reduce the pollution from idling and accelerating vehicles, but there are still vehicles emmitting pollutants. It's reducing a negative impact, not creating a positive impact. --Triskele Jim 17:33, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

More roads and improved air quality?
Roads are indeed sometimes justified on the grounds of improved air quality on other parts of the network however induced demand tends to result in new traffic replacing the relieved traffic on the old roads - the Newbury bypass being a well-known example. Transportation demand management is generally required on relieved roads to protect them from that effect. Needless to say that more road tend to mean more overall air pollution but it may move it from an urban area to a rural area. I am not attempting to integrate this content into the article yet. PeterEastern (talk) 01:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, induced/latent demand the result of demand having been allowed to outstrip supply, and only occurs if things have been allowed to bottle up. If new capacity is added whilst free-flow still occurs it does not occur.  The real problem of course is being able to accurately and adequately predict demand and demand patterns and to overcome the political blocks on road provision that we have allowed to be fabricated.  Free-flowing traffic is undoubtedly more efficient traffic - and thus less polluting traffic. -- de Facto (talk). 12:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * What also isn't mentioned here is that a road/flat terrain actually decreases emissions when compared to driving a vehicle directly on the soil.

KVDP (talk) 09:01, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Unjustifyable amount of roads
According to the documentary "L'Homme et la mer ", 50% of all humans (and even higher percentages in Africa) live at less than 1 km of the sea. It can thus be argued that building so much cross-country raods (highways) is not justifyable, especially seeing the environmental damage these inflict.

Mention in article KVDP (talk) 09:01, 17 July 2013 (UTC)