Applications of road project environmental impact assessment (EIA) must develop as a tool with connections to assessments in system planning, in programme and policy planning. The introduction of EIA for road projects in Sweden has recently been evaluated, including international comparisons. The paper is based on this work. In Sweden, other Scandinavian countries and West Germany, cost benefit analysis or similar aggregating methods have dominated the evaluation of road projects. The effort to also evaluate environmental effects in monetary terms has been an obstacle for implementation of an EIA culture. Sometimes also the expected role of EIA in decision making can be overestimated, for example among environmental groups. Local effects can be managed in project-EIA but regional and global effects cannot be handled on project level. For example, alternative modes of transportation must rather be discussed on system level. If EIA is carried out early and integrated in the planning and design process, then the EIA can play a more active role for a better environment. The possibility to achieve a good integration of EIA into a specific country's planning system is better in many parts of Europe than in the USA.
Abstract