How traffic noise captured our cities and how to regain our cities

Henk Wolfert1
1

DCMR EPA, Schiedam, The Netherlands, Email: henk.wolfert@dcmr.nl

Spatial spread of work, living and leisure

Introduction
The first round of Noise Mapping, according to the Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC, showed that road traffic noise is the most dominant noise source. This was also found in the Noise Questionnaire set out by Working Group Noise EUROCITIES (WGN) in 2008. Approximately 70 million of the European citizens, living in agglomerations as meant in the Environmental Noise Directive are exposed to noise levels higher than 55 dB LDEN resulting in annoyance and other health effects. It is expected that these numbers will increase to 180 220 million people. According to these findings and expectations WGN decided to start the battle against road traffic noise as one of their main priorities. Therefore, numerous actions were already undertaken such as requests to the European Commission to strengthen the Emission Limit Values of vehicles, lorries, motorized two and three wheelers and tires. Besides the crusade against noisy vehicles, WGN also provided the cities with information on Best Practices in order to tackle the noise. This paper will give insight in the causes of transport, the unwanted effects and how to reduce or mitigate this by good urban planning.

Developments
Last decades the number of vehicles grew, see figure 1. The red line represents the freight transport and the green line represents passenger transport. The blue line represents the GDP ref. the year 2000. Not only passenger cars grew but also lorries and vans. Regarding the vans it should be mentioned that the environmental performance of these sort is rather poor. This for economic reasons. Entrepreneurs and hauliers can buy transport volume for a low prices. As known from numerous articles and reports, noise of cars, vans and lorries has not or hardly decreased the last decades. Compared to the first Emission Limit Values (ELV) in European legislation [3] it appeared that ELV lowered but, unfortunately the real noise emitted by the vehicles not or just a little, see figures 2 and 3. Reasons are multiple, like higher performance, wider and stiffer tires but also the test method that has changes last years.

figure 1: traffic growth (source: pocket book 2012 EU)

figure 2: noise emitted by cars over the years

In these eras of urbanization and re-urbanization a high percentage of people is living in urban areas and their numbers will increase in the decades to come. Currently almost seventy percent of the people are living in cities. Their share will grow to eighty percent in 2050 [1] which means that in 2050 the same amount of people is living in cities as now in the whole world, namely around 9 billion people. Increase of urban mobility can be expected.

Determinants of car use

From [2] we know that there are a lot of factors influencing car mobility. Most important to be mentioned here are: Globalisation, single market EU Urbanisation and densification Prosperity and increased free time Life style and other social factors Other development that took place are enhancing and expanding infrastructure all over Europe and this still is going on. From [4,5,6] and private observations it is known that more roads lead to more traffic. The financial downturn
figure 3: noise emitted by lorries over the years

could be considered as a phenomena that could decrease the amount of traffic. For freight transport the dip can be seen from figure 1. The economic crisis really has affected the transportation of goods in EU27. The purchase of new cars showed some drop but in general, on the long term, the car fleet in EU27 is expected to grow [7]. In spite of a temporary lapse, due to the financial crisis, it might be expected that the car fleet and the mileage is growing next decades. This because the noise emitted by individual vehicles seems not go down. Recently the European parliament voted in favour of a weak proposal on motor vehicle noise [8] which implies hardly any reduction. This proposal should be approved by the European Council as well but when it comes to legislation, no decline of noise may be expected.

poles near parking places which are for free or set parking places only destined for e-vehicles. d. When extending the cities with new districts the issues mentioned under a and b should be taken into account. Building car free or at least car restricted neighbourhoods. The same applies for districts that are under urban renewal. When renewing these districts it is important to improve public transport, to provide citizens with sufficient facilities like shops, schools, et cetera. Simultaneously people should work on (re-) socialisation regarding car-use. By means of education in families, social networks and schools especially youngsters can be affected to chose for public transport or other modes such as walking and biking. From [9] it is known that youngsters are less car addicted than adults and from [10] can be learnt that youngsters that grew up in car-free or not caraddicted families are more in favour of public transport trips. When applying quiet road surfaces in urban areas it should be combined with lower speeds (maximum 40 km/hr) in order to avoid dominating tires noise. Pedestrian zones could be set in city centres which could be in force during twenty four hours or just during the sensitive periods of the day. Near sensitive buildings such as schools, nursing homes, hospitals, et cetera and sensitive areas such as designated quiet urban areas low speeds roads or even car-free roads could be set by the municipality. An alternative could be that those roads are only allowed for low-noise vehicles like electric and hybrid cars. By designating shared spaces in urban areas car drivers will be more carefully and attentive which leads to lower and constant speeds. This shared spaces could be seen as priority areas for more vulnerable road-users like pedestrian and bikers. In order to avoid noisy and dirty public transport the competent authorities should demand for public transport that is clean, energy friendly and quiet meaning electric or hybrid fuelled public transport for use in urban areas. The same should apply for service vehicles like dust (garbage) carts, cleaning vehicles, et cetera.

e.

f.

Dilemmas and solutions

European cities are confronted with some difficulties. The noise burden in cities may be expected to grow. Reasons are described above. Local measures do have limited effect, especially in the inner city. Most effective measure that can be applied is quiet road surface. Noise emission from cars will not decrease probably. Source approach seems to be failed. Because end of pipe measures do not result in sufficient effects other measures are needed which are far more drastically. The announcement of the European Commission in [8] regarding the action on curbing 50% of conventional fuelled vehicles by 2030 and 100% by 2050 from urban areas could offer the solution. This means that only electric or hybrid motorised vehicles are allowed to enter the city. Noise from ring ways could be mitigated by speed reduction and noise barriers in combination with quiet road surfaces when and where needed. In the time being (37 years) governments and society must work along various strands. A number of effective noise measures that can be implemented in the field of urban planning or re-planning are: a. Improvement of public transport by making it more comfortable and accessible. Interconnections should be enhanced and guaranteed. Citizens should have a public transport (tram, subway, bus) stop within 5 minutes walk or bike trip from their homes. Inbound travellers, from outside the city, should dispose over parking places at cities boundaries (platforms) from where the trip can be continued by means of public transport. Public Transport stops and station should be more comfortable, offering shelter, shadow or warmth and some goods such as coffee and news papers. Moreover, it should give travel information. Parking fees and parking places in cities, especially the inner city should be scarce and expensive; discouraging car use and -driving. An alternative that could be considered is to give free access and parking to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. In order to stimulate and attract more electric and hybrid cars municipalities could install charging

g.

h.

i.

j.

k.

l.

b.

m. Municipalities could consider to implement the plans proposed by the European Commission earlier and not to wait until 2030 or 2050 but to use a stricter time frame. E.g. 2025 and 2035. n. Introducing clean, carbon free and noiseless city logistics which is already in place in many European cities for good deliveries at night.

c.

o.

Financial and fiscal measures could be a part of urban planning measures as well. Some examples are road charging, toll or financial support when purchasing electric or hybrid vehicles. Some very last measures that could be considered is the road design and the design of the cities' infrastructure. By designing buildings that shield the noise from the sensitive areas behind those buildings or laying the pedestrian and biking lanes and service roads between the car lanes a small reduction can be obtained.

progress, Council Directive 70/157/EEC concerning the permissible sound level and the exhaust system of motor vehicles. [4] Gilles Duranton et all. The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US cities, 2008 [5] Tony Dutzik, More Roads, More Traffic, Maryland 2002 [6] Rudolf H.H. Pfleiderer et al. New Roads generate new traffic. World transport policy and practice, volume 1, no 1 1995. [7] ACEA Pocket Guide 2012 [8] European Commission. White Paper on Transport, Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area- Towards a competitive and resource efficient transport system. COM (2011)144 final. [9] Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment. Mobiliteitsbalans 2012. [10] Sonja Haustein et all. Car use of young adults: The role of travel socialization. Universitt Bochum 2008 [11] Wolfert, H. How to gain political and public interest for noise. INTERNOISE 2010, Lisbon.

p.

Resume
By giving a limited list of measures that could be taken to lower the noise in our European cities it might be clear that lowering the noise burden significantly in cities is from a technical point of view feasible. Whether this are measures at source like engines, exhausts , tires noise and quiet road surfaces. Traffic management could help also a little to lower the noise by speed reduction, smoothing traffic flows, detours, et cetera. The same applies for Intelligence Transport Systems and a lot of other measures that can be devised. These kind of measures are fighting the symptoms and not the cause. However, it is unimaginable that use of vehicles can be stopped. Transport is needed for economic reason. Transport adds to 4.6% to employment in EU27 and 4.5% of the EUs' Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Transport contributes also to prosperity, welfare and strange enough also to human well-being. It is only the challenge to mitigate or avoid the polluting effects of transport. Not only in urban areas but also in rural areas. To realise a significant drop in noise, air pollution and carbon emission in cities we could count on electrification of transport means in urban areas. As one may know this only gives a release locally because electric power is mainly generated by means of fossil fuels like coal, gas, wood and oil. The misery is emitted elsewhere and after being emitted and spread it falls down in smaller concentrations admittedly but it is still present. Whereas it seems that European Union does not force the car-industry to make their cars quieter, see above, the answers should not be expected from 'Brussels' apparently. Answers should come from local authorities and SME's organising their work and life in another way. By means of another mindset and by means of changing behaviour of citizens, producers and consumers. From [11] we know that changing human behaviour is more arduous than sending a man to the moon. Thus mankind should not only be invited, stimulated but also be forced a little to reach changed behaviour. This could be done by implementing measures, obstacles, instruments that adapts human behaviour in their way to survive in daily life.

References
[1] http://www. eurostat.eu [2] Wolfert, H. EUROCITIES Position Paper on Urban Transport Noise, Internoise 2012. [3] Commission Directive 2007/34/EC of 14 June 2007 amending, for the purposes of its adaptation to technical