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Published on: October 16, 2012
Combined annoyance response from railroad and road traffic noise in an alpine valley
Christoph Lechner1, Christian Kirisits2, Stephan Bose-O'Reill3
1UMIT - University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall i. T., Austria.
Context:
The aim of this study was to verify the contributing effect in the cases of combined road traffic noise and railroad traffic noise on total noise annoyance.
Materials And Methods:
After opening the four-track railway of the Lower Inn Valley Route in Austria, an evaluation study was conducted by an interview survey (n=1003). The data of this survey included answers on annoyance caused by railroad, road traffic noise and total annoyance as well as self-evaluated noise sensitivity.
Results:
When annoyance is only related to one of these sources, a 10% share of highly annoyed persons was observed at 59 dB for road noise and 60 dB for railroad noise. The annoyance model including both noise sources with a coefficient of 0.145 for road noise, 0.034 for railroad noise and 0.431 for noise sensitivity (all p-values < 0.01) showed a regression coefficient R2 of 0.299. The presence of road background noise did not influence the annoyance on railway noise.
Conclusion:
The combined influence of road and railway noise showed an increase of total annoyance.
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