Environmental Issues Related To Construction Of Motorways In Poland And In Croatia

The motorway construction process in Europe is still in its implementation phase. The necessity of dynamic development of the national road infrastructure is also confirmed by the European statistical data, which presents the dynamics of the increasing role of the road transport in the passenger transport in relation to the European Union countries. The Polish road infrastructure still requires high financial inputs which could support and ensure appropriate standards of the existing networks, and also in order to meet the market demands, which result from the increased exchange of goods and the passenger transport. It is necessary to systematically improve the technical conditions of the Polish network of state roads, in order to eliminate its basic limitations, as well as to allow for its development. The motorway construction process in Poland has entered the successive stage. In spite of the large scale of commenced investments, the Polish network of state roads, including motorways and expressways is not internally coherent and insufficiently pervious. The continuation of investment activities on the main lines of the roads in Poland, is the challenge for the near future. In the states, which have been intensively modernised, such as Poland and Croatia, considerably acceleration of the development of such roads may be noticed. In Poland, the National Spatial Development Strategy 2030 was adopted by the Governmental Resolution dated December 13, 2011. It specified the necessity to "improve the territorial accessibility in different spatial scales, through the development of the transport infrastructure", implemented in the conditions of sustainable development. However, the line investments of this type have their impacts on modifications in the agricultural space and the natural environment. The paper will present different aspects of impacts of road investments on soils, water and the landscape, and on the land use ways. Documents required for the process of protection and the environmental protection methods, applied in the process of planning locations and implementation of motorways construction in Poland and in Croatia will be also discussed.