The main priorities for environmental protection in railway transport are: air protection, water resources protection, soil protection, waste management; reduction of noise pollution; restriction of electromagnetic effects; reduction of radiation effects.

The prevention of these aspects of the negative impact of railway transport over the environment is facilitated by more than one million trees and bushes, covering an overall area of about 5 000 000 m2 of plantations, which vary in type and purpose.

Environmentally-sound preservation, cultivation and development of railway scenery is a specific and significant sphere, which includes a large volume of various activities, related both to the security of permanent way and its structures, as well as with the environmental protection and the environmentally-friendly construction of railway scenery. The gradual cultivation of the wayside includes re-cultivation of the terrains, followed by the establishment of plantations for special, sanitary and scenic purposes.

In order to be compliant with the activity of European railway administrations, it is necessary that the NRIC revise the environmental status in order to establish an environment management system; identify the major problems for the implementation of requirements, set in a number of conventions; proposes a strategy for the implementation of these requirements; elaborate a plan, including objectives, tasks and measures for the implementation of the strategy.

The overall objective is that Bulgaria should enter the EU in 2007 with fully-established units for efficient environment management. This necessitates the development of a common database, including all environment components and factors, and the establishment of prerequisites for the implementation of the international standard ISO 14001. In order to enable railway transport to elaborate its environmental policy in harmony with the European one and to ensure its step-by-step implementation (in cooperation with the relevant governmental institutions), the following actions should be undertaken: conduct a study on the status of wayside in the railway network and of the plantations of diverse types and purpose in it; establishment of an internal regulatory framework, aimed at the optimisation and efficient management of environmental safety; outline the national objectives as to the reduction of harmful effects of railway transport over the population and the environment; coordination of activities, undertaken by the railway administrations, with a view to the improvement of environmental safety; improvement of economic mechanisms to promote environmental protection activity; establish and develop information-analytical systems to provide information for environmentally-friendly technologies, applied by railway administrations; implementation of obligatory control over technical status by means of state-of-art equipment; development of environmental monitoring project for the assessment and forecast of changes in environmental status with a view to the natural processes; training of experts in the sphere of environment management systems.