Problems of railway noise-a case study

Under Directive 2002/49/EC relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise, all European countries are obliged to model their environmental noise levels in heavily populated areas. Some countries have their own national method, to predict noise but most have not created one yet. The recommendation for countries that do not have their own model is to use an interim method. The Dutch SRM II scheme is suggested for railways. In addition to the Dutch model, this paper describes and discusses 3 other national methods. Moreover, discrepancies between the HARMONOISE and IMAGINE projects are analysed. The results of rail traffic noise measurements are compared with national methods.