Addressing “behind the Scenes” Ecological Concerns Associated with the Design, Construction, Operation and Maintenance of an Urban Transportation System– a New York City Transit Perspective on Sustainability

The field of road ecology, slowly emerging over two decades, offers great promise to transportation, nature and society, and a recent book, Road Ecology: Science and Solutions, should help catalyze the field. The objective of this article is to provide additional insight into the book by highlighting its process of development, and pinpoint some underlying bases for expecting the field to accelerate. The book evolved from: recurrent environmental problems; early international work; and TRB and ICOET initiatives. Fourteen co-authors from academia and government, including two spearheaders, four transportation experts, one hydrologist, nine ecologists, and a supporting cast of forty from the transportation and environmental communities created the book. Several broad challenges required solutions: present the best possible science; reveal an array of useful applications; avoid drowning in detail; and mesh authors to complete the book in two years. Also key specific decisions molded the book: title, publisher, sponsors, and royalties; focus on USA, Canada, and mainstream road network; peer-reviewed literature, and no specific solutions recommended; several topics with minimal, and with ample, coverage; and the nature of the final chapter. Since publication, salutary evidence indicates that the book is reaching: the transportation and environmental communities; educated public and conservation organizations; and decision-makers. Several trends in addition to the book seem to be catalyzing the field of road ecology. Rapid growth in research and the development of useful applications is evident, and important promising opportunities now lie on the palette of the diverse specialists. The conceptual objective of the field for society appears to be safe and efficient mobility meshed with natural processes and biodiversity. Thus the area along and adjoining the entire road network should significantly improve ecologically, while also strengthening the network of ecological flows and large green areas across the land. Background Our road system emerged from a road network developed over centuries, motorized vehicles added in the past century, and sealed asphalt/concrete road surfaces added over decades. The transportation community plans, builds, studies and manages this massive road system for the benefit of society. Not surprisingly, public concern with the environmental effects of such a system which began early and over the past two decades, seems to be accelerating (Lay 1992, Canters 1997, National Research Council 1997, Center for Transportation and the Environment 2002, Transportation Research Board 2002). Thus, environmental protection has grown to be one of several central foci of the transportation community. Yet this environmental protection has been largely based on scattered, indirect and limited ecological knowledge or theory relative to roads/vehicles, and with little direct role of the mainstream ecological community. Into this near-vacuum has appeared a promising new area of knowledge. Road ecology explores and addresses the relationship between the natural environment and the road system. The maturing of landscape ecology (Forman 1995, Turner et al. 2001) and its linking of key ecological specialties at the scale of a road system (Saunders and Hobbs 1991, Canters 1997, Bennett 1999), was a background or catalyst for the field. Moreover a group of ecologists and transportation experts recently coalesced to pull the threads of knowledge and theory together in a book, Road Ecology: Science and Solutions (Forman et al. 2003). Building on earlier foundations, this book is helping to develop and underpin an emergent field of road ecology with its own body of principles and applications. Thus the objectives of this brief article are to: 1. Provide underlying insight into the book by elucidating its process of development; and 2. Highlight some ways the field of road ecology is being catalyzed that benefits the road (or transportation) system, nature, and society. The Book, Road Ecology Four dimensions here highlight the intellectual development of the book: (1) genesis, (2) authors and supporting cast, (3) broad challenges requiring solutions, and (4) specific decisions made. Genesis Recurrent environmental problems relative to the road system effectively represent the spark for the book (table 1) (Lay 1992, National Research Council 1997, Forman et al. 2003). Mud and dust, erosion and sedimentation, roadkills, degraded biological diversity, air pollutants, and greenhouse gases result from roads and vehicles. Without these and their apparent worsening, no book would have appeared. Rather than being just an ecological analysis of such things, the added “solution” nature of the book results from the presence of existing working solutions, especially international. For example, wildlife overpasses in The Netherlands and elsewhere, underpasses as in Florida, amphibian tunnels in Europe, diverse erosion-control methods, and roadside habitatand wildflower-enhancement techniques are widely distributed (Langton 1989, Aanen et al. 1991, Bekker et al. 1995, Evink et al. 1996, Harper-Lore 1999), but in many cases less widely known.