Assessment of environmental impacts and reduction opportunities for road infrastructures in India

The present study assessed the environmental impacts from road infrastructures in India and identified potential of impacts reduction. The construction of flexible pavement had 63 % higher impacts on abiotic depletion fossil. Rigid pavement had 47 % higher impacts on acidification, 198 % on global warming and 689 % on human toxicity. The flexible pavement had higher impacts from the maintenance phase. The MDR rigid pavement had CO₂ offset due to albedo and carbonation of 69.60 and 18.97 tonnes respectively and MDR flexible pavement had CO₂ release of 345 tonnes. The improvement scenarios reduced the overall construction phase impacts by 38 % and 22 % from flexible and rigid pavements respectively. Streetlights contributed higher impacts among other minor infrastructures. Deforestation caused carbon sink loss of 76 and 228 tonnes CO₂ eq./km for flexible and rigid pavements respectively. The uncertainty analysis showed that the results of this study is reliable and had standard deviation less than 5 %.