Traffic pollution: Control policy and research trend

This paper focuses on the control policies and countermeasures to prevent traffic pollution, and researches to enforce them. Traffic pollution, such as air pollution and road traffic noise caused by motor vehicles, continues to be one of the most serious and complicated environmental problems in major urban areas, and will remain so in the ‘Network Society’ projected into the year 2000. The first step of regulating emission from vehicles, which depends on technical availability, halfway succeeded, and the second step directed towards reduction of friction between traffic and residences in respective areas by means of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIS) and improvement of road structure and roadside environment is in progress. While the effectiveness of those countermeasures reached the plateau, a wave of urbanization and motorization overwhelmed and cancelled them. This led to the third step of a more comprehensive planning policy cooperating with transportation and urban management. The fourth policy expected is an economic incentive policy, such as road pricing, that takes the place of conventional regulatory countermeasures.