Recently, railroad Abstract
construction projects have been significantly increased in both number and total length as national transport policy pays an attention to railroad system more than other systems. Accordingly, it is highly demanded to develop researches related to central effects of railroad construction on environment either during construction or in operation. This study, therefore, deals with two general topics related to railroad construction; 1) the understanding of general environmental effects mainly focused on environmental impact assessment and 2) the procedure and measure of impact assessment.
In order to advance our understanding of the environmental effects involved, two types of transport infrastructures, which are railroad and vehicle road, have been compared in terms of environmental valuation such as energy efficiency, social cost and etc. It is identified that railroad is more effective than vehicle road in terms of evaluating overall environmental costs. This result indicates that the environmentally-friendly characteristics of railroad can be a foundation to establish national transport infrastructure as well as to stimulate its investment programs. In addition, current status and future direction of railroad policy, planning of national railroad network were briefly examined.
The characteristics of environmental assessments for both railroad planning and railroad construction has been analyzed based on Preliminary Environmental Review System (PERS) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), respectively. The result