Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Environmental Costs Account: A Base for
Measuring Sustainability in Transport Plans
Andres Monzón, Alvaro Fernandez, and Pablo Jorda
Assessment of Environmental Costs in Urban Areas
Achieving sustainable mobility in urban areas means to reconcile environmental
protection with social well-being and economic development. These targets include
reducing the negative impacts from transport, including pollution, noise and
congestion, while ensuring affordable, accessible and safe mobility, without affecting
the living conditions of future generations [1, 2] .
To measure how sustainable mobility is achieved we need to settle a number of
indicators [3] . However, the assessment methods of transport policies more often
use time and cost indicators rather than environmental ones [4] .
The approach adopted to analyze transport sustainability is to develop the socio-
environmental account of transport means for each specific city or region [5] . This
integrated approach considers all transport externalities in a comparative way and is
a good tool for planning taken into account social fairness [6-8] . We have used these
concepts making the travelers transport account of Madrid. In this account, we have
worked with social costs like a way for analyzing the sustainable transport.
This kind of assessment has been improved over time (decades) by including
more factors [9, 10] . Thus, in Europe we can find several transport studies dealing
with counts of general social cost or externalities at a national, regional or urban
level [11, 12] .
In this paper, we show the importance of urban and metropolitan environmental
cost among various diverse transports modes. We will analyze the results of the
Madrid case study and we will point to guidelines for a more sustainable develop-
ment in cities.
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