Noise mitigation projects are usually very expensive and may threaten the economic viability in the current harsh competitive market, thus hindering sustainable transport policies. It is therefore of vital interest that the action plans required by the EU Environmental Noise Directive are designed in the most cost-effective way possible. The Swiss Federal Railways are currently successfully implementing a noise abatement programme based on extensive mapping and calculation of different mitigation scenarios. The elements of the programme are the improvement of all Swiss rolling stock, building noise barriers were a predefined cost-effectiveness index is attained and installing insulated windows in all cases where the thresholds are not attained with the first two measures. To enable efficient noise barrier planning, the noise mapping tool was upgraded into a sophisticated planning tool. With the first two elements of this strategy, almost 70 % of the lineside population can be protected at about 30 % of the costs required to attain threshold levels for all inhabitants. Similar savings were reported in the EU and UIC sponsored STAIRRS (Strategies and Tools to Assess and Implement noise Reducing measures for Railway Systems) project, where mapping and scenario calculation were undertaken on 11000 km of European railways and extrapolated to 21 countries. Also in this project all cost-effective solutions included reducing the noise of freight vehicles. Similar effects were demonstrated in other projects. Since both the Swiss and the European studies demonstrate that cost-effective solutions include network-wide measures such as rolling stock improvement, it is important that action plans not only include individual agglomerations but encompass a larger view.
Cost-effective abatement programmes for railway noise
Kostengünstige Bekämpfungsprogramme gegen Eisenbahnlärm
2005
8 Seiten, 5 Quellen
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Datenträger
Englisch
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