Monitoring the impact of roads on the environment

The transport infrastructure and traffic on it significantly affect the quality of the surrounding environment. Most often, in this context, they talk about a significant contribution to air pollution and noise production. Monitoring the impact of transport infrastructure on the environment, resulting in the identification of new problems, the monitoring of trends and the implementation of appropriate mitigating measures, thus becomes essential. The methodological instruction was developed as a response to a number of expert studies, which in their conclusions recommend the implementation of monitoring of the impacts of transport infrastructure on various components of the environment at various stages of the implementation of infrastructure projects, and also in view of the fact that there is no document of this type in the Czech Republic, which would unified the requirements and principles of monitoring with the aim of improving the state of the environment.

The methodology primarily deals with the issue of obtaining relevant data on air quality pollution and noise pollution in various phases of the construction of transport infrastructure, which will refine the assessment of the effects of transport infrastructure on the environment. In particular, it introduces the condition of monitoring the air quality and noise load after construction as a check for the assumed condition stated in the environmental impact assessment documents based only on modeling. In the case of detection of an excessive load compared to the assumption, it will be possible to request the application of appropriate measures to fulfill the assumptions with the aim of preventing possible serious impacts on human health.

The aim of the methodology is therefore to unify the procedures for project preparation, implementation and evaluation of air quality and noise load monitoring for individual road sections in order to provide objective information about the actual state and development of the quality of various components of the environment in the area affected by road construction and operation, with a focus on air and noise pollution.