The role of railway transport in designing a proecological transport system

Abstract

This paper is prepared as a part of the scientific project “Proecological transport system designing” (EMITRANSYS). It presents the selected aspects and roles of railway transport in realization of the tasks set out by the national transport system. Particular attention is paid to the ecological aspects of railway transport, especially to the emission of pollutants in comparison to road transport. The ecological aspects are crucial for a systemic approach to the designing of transport and are important in developing a sustainable economy. One of the criteria for designing a large scale transport system is the external cost of environmental degradation. Two partial criteria considering external costs related to harmful emissions resulting from cargo and passenger streams distribution onto a network are discussed in the paper. These criteria are implemented into the PTV Visum environment for simulation experiments.