The contribution of rail transport to noise pollution is significant, 10% of people being exposed to noise levels exceeding the “serious disturbance” threshold. In some European regions, the public opinion includes severe opponents of railway noise who demand political initiatives for reducing this type of pollution. The European Community has already taken a stand against such problems and adopted measures on environment protection and railway interoperability.
Noise is seen as the most important environment issue for those living in the neighbourhood of a railway line. To solve this problem with negative influences, infrastructure companies, railway operators, but mostly the industry work on progressively reducing noise pollution. The constantly increasing market demand in transport in Europe leads to a less peaceful transport system affecting many citizens both during the day and over night. However, studies show that noise pollution is much higher in road and air transport, than in railway transport. Until presently, two of the most important measures for reducing noise were aimed towards introducing noise barriers and insulating the windows of the trains.
Noise will remain one of the key environment issues for all types of transport in the EU for a long period of time because of the inherent nature of the problem and the increasing transport demand. As part of the Directive on Environmental Noise, each member state will make noise maps for the noise generated by main highways, railways and airports.
In the last 10 years, the railway industry has developed several types of brake shoes using composite materials for replacing the conventional cast iron brake shoes, the main cause of rail and wheel roughness. These new brake shoes release up to 50% less noise. The K-type brake shoes represent a tested technology used for new cars, but which also implies high post-equipping costs. That is why other type of brake shoes, such as the LL brake shoes, is especially manufactured for the post-equipping of cars. At the beginning of 2008, a type of K brake shoes received UIC’s permanent approval, while three types of LL brake shoes were only temporarily certified.
According to the impact assessment study, it is necessary to post-equip 370,000 cars, almost two thirds of which being owned by national railway operators and one third by private operators (including combined transport operators and small railway undertakings).
With the current technology, the post-equipping with trigger investment cost of EUR 200-700 Million (LL brake shoes) and EUR 1.0-1.8 Billion (K brake shoes) and additional costs of EUR 200-400 Million (until 2015 for both technologies).
On the other hand, reducing the noise caused by airplanes seems to become a priority project on the EU’s noise pollution agenda.
A recent project, CARING (Contribution of Airlines for the Reduction of Industry Nuisances and Gases), was launched by the Clean Sky Joint Technological Initiative, aimed at studying the efficient methods for reducing noise pollution cased by planes, especially during the takeoff and the landing. The project was launched in early 2010, a new economic model and the implementation of the best operating practices being expected for the end of 2012. At the same time, a new management system including flights on eco routes is expected in 2014.
Share on:
