Managing the environmental impacts of land transport: a measured approach to sustainability by integrating environmental analysis with urban planning.

From a "clean-sheet" study into the effects of vehicle emissions on local air quality, the New Zealand Ministry of Transport developed an approach referred to as Environmental Capacity Analysis (ECA). This is a practical analytical tool for managing the complexity of environmental effects, integrated with the routines of overall urban management. The guiding principles of ECA include: being impacts based; establishing clear targets; using a measured approach; demonstrating actual effectiveness and practicality of solutions; and being sustainable. The ECA process can be applied to any urban situation. Once developed for a specified location, the 'ECA package' becomes a live, geospatially defined model of the local equilibrium between emission loading patterns and receiving environment impacts. The ECA is able to track variations in urban form and activity (traffic and other). It can also determine what mitigation strategies are required, now or in the future, to maintain threshold targets and improve performance over time. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E210413.