The State of the Environment Report states that road planning priorities with an "emphasis [...] on providing high-capacity roads to fringe and coastal areas" has led to dispersed land use that is now under question. Certainly there are trends that support the claim that continued expansion and use of the road transport system will be unsustainable from an environmental perspective. This paper explores ways in which the potential environmental consequences of different investment profiles (representing different strategic emphases) can be considered. The report incorporates an examination of the distribution of road expenditures and potential environmental consequences using a classification of road expenditures based on location and road type. There are four key issues addressed in the paper: (1) What are 'road planning priorities' and how can they be represented through the distribution of investments? (2) Examination of an approach for considering the broad potential environmental consequences of investment profiles; (3) The use of valued environmental components (VECs) to represent key environmental resources; (4) A qualitative environmental impact rating (using `high', `medium', `low' scales) to describe potential environmental effects. A simple weighting and scoring technique is used to provide a visual representation called an `environmental map'. (Author/publisher) Austroads Project N.RSM.9704.
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