Annoyance Due to Railway Traffic Noise: Assessment of the European Union Dose-effect Relationships and of the Annoyance Equivalents Model When Combined with Road Traffic and Aircraft Noises

In 2012, a survey was carried out in 8 French cities to study noise annoyance due to combined transportation noise sources. Both partial and total annoyances were measured. The current paper will first focus on partial noise annoyance due to railway traffic measured in 6 French cities. In order to predict annoyance due to single transportation noise sources, the European Commission recommends the use of dose-effect relationships proposed in Annoyance from transportation noise: relationships with exposure metrics DNL and DENL and their confidence intervals, Miedema and Oudshoorn, Environmental Health Perspective, 2001. The dose-effect relationships for railway traffic noise annoyance were assessed using measured partial annoyance. The prediction of annoyance was not satisfactory. Using the survey data, new dose-effect relationships were calculated following the methodology suggested by Miedema and Oudshoorn. This led to a better calculation of annoyance due to railway traffic noise.