ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENTS INSTRUMENTS FOR URBAN TRANSPORTATION PLANNING. FROM A REACTIVE TO A PROACTIVE APPROACH.

There is a growing interest regarding the development of environmental assessment instruments for application in urban transportation planning. Nevertheless, a great number of studies show that present instruments have a very low effectiveness when confronted with the complexity of the environmental consequences of urban transportation in its interaction with land use factors. Furthermore, the majority of environmental instruments are rather oriented towards monitoring plans than towards supporting decision-making. To address these problems, this paper presents a strategy for proactive environmental instruments design ('PEID strategy') as a method for developing environmental assessment instruments for supporting decision-making in urban transportation planning. Accordingly to this strategy, environmental instruments must fulfil four key criteria: be performance-based, reference values-based, integration-oriented and decision-oriented. To illustrate and assess the worth of this strategy, an environmental assessment instrument has been developed following these criteria and applied to evaluate alternative plans for a transit corridor in the city of Granada, Spain. The paper describes this application and reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of the strategy as well as on issues for futures research.