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There is a large subjective element in planning. The planner may be required to find an optimal alignment that balances low cost with non-quantitative factors, such as how the route impacts the environment and community.
This process of minimizing costs while preserving environmental amenities can be complex, leading to difficult questions about how environmental impact is measured and how it is balanced against objective costs.
To manage this, you can follow one of these:
Assign monetary values to the areas of environmental importance and then incorporate them into the objective function. It may be possible (though difficult and costly) to allocate a monetary value to each square meter (yard) of a National Park based on the impact that the alienation of that square meter (yard) would have on the integrity of the park. However, this does not address the more difficult problem of the impact of the alignment on the contiguity of the Park. There is also the difficulty that any interested party that disagrees with the result will contest the values assigned to the subjective factors, arguing for an increase or decrease depending on how they want the answer changed.
Recognize that environmental impact is essentially multi-dimensional and that any judgment about the value of environmental amenities also involves judgments about the relative value of different aspects of the environment. Determine whether a conflict exists and, if it does, what additional objective costs would be imposed on the alignment by avoiding the environmentally sensitive area completely. If this is considered excessive, various compromises can be investigated. This (favored) strategy is based on the view that computer packages should not make decisions that are essentially subjective; rather they should be used to generate objective information which can be used by planners
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