| Abstract: | The economic, social and environmental impacts of trunk roads have, to say the least, created much heated discussion and perhaps too little considered evaluation. This paper puts forward a methodology for effectively examining the Trunk Roads Programme from the environmentalist's viewpoint. The authors rightly concentrate on the fact that the road programme has, to some extent at least, become a paradigm for the whole consumer based system. They pursue the argument further than the elementary conflict between competing systems of public transport and pursue the difficult, but important, questions of the dichotomy between the desire for individual mobility (and its assumptions of human liberty) and the need to evaluate external costs which are rarely levied in full upon the beneficiaries. Whilst much of the article concentrates on the principles of a cost benefit evaluation, it brings out some rather important and long term aspects of the construction of these arteries of society which can be described as either scars upon the earth or liberating and effective avenues of mobility. The question remains a vital one for society at large. |
