DECISION-MAKING TOOL FOR ECOLOGICAL BRIDGES PLANNING

Ecological bridges design and construction gained importance in the past decades. Nevertheless, resources have been wasted on badly planned ecological bridges. These bridges do not serve their purpose, i.e. connecting of habitats and thusly decreasing the fragmentation of landscape caused by high capacity transport infrastructure. Mistakes have been made both in the placement of the bridges and in their layout. These days, due to the decrease of public resources caused by the economic crisis, wider considerations are made on ecological bridges placement. A specialized bridge spanning over the motorway is considered as the last option when all the compensatory measures are depleted and the function of the bridge cannot be attributed to neighboring motorway under-bridges. The motorway underbridges spanning over creeks, roads or railways should be able to cover both functions. A decision-making tool is needed to support the design process and help assessing costs of various structural solutions and thusly help creating alternatives for expensive local solutions by creating permeable motorway network. The tool should incorporate both the design and maintenance costs. The paper presents principles of a decision-making tool for ecological bridges planning which covers all the topics.