Environmental Impact Assessment: Highway Location

Two major factors involved in the selection of an alinement for a highway are addressed. The first is the identification of those environmental concerns that should be considered in the alinement selection phase; and secondly, the development of a methodology for the incorporation of the environmental factors into the alinement assessment task. The environmental concerns were grouped into two categories: (1) Physical environment; and (2) social environment. Included in the physical environment category were these factors: Water regime, erodibility, woodlands, unique ecological areas, wildlife, and agricultural. The social environment category contained the factors: Land development, noise, utilities, recreation, unique cultural features, and aesthetics/scenery. A number of techniques capable of allowing the environmental concerns or factors to be incorporated into the alinement assessment task were investigated. The method recommended for use by location engineers was an overlay technique utilizing a computer program package containing a map plotting routine.