Road Traffic Noise in Downtown Area of Tehran, Iran

Noise pollution is a major problem for the quality of life in urban areas. The present study was conducted to determine the noise levels of road traffic at central area of Tehran. It focused on one of the busy and crowded square along with its 7 connecting streets, which had a heavy traffic and located in the downtown of the city. Total of 115 measuring points were selected along the roads, pavements and in the shopping areas to adequately represent the different acoustically commercial situations. The measuring points were divided in to 4 site-groups namely; Street, Pavement, Shop and Barrier each with 60, 40, 10, and 5 measuring points respectively. The measurements were carried out during a full week days started on Saturday morning and end on Friday evening. The A-weighted continuous equivalent sound level values, LAeq; LA max; LA min ; and the statistical levels: L1, L10, L50, L90 and L99 as well as the octave band center frequencies sound pressure levels were manually measured at each point separately. The mean values of LAeq for Street, Pavement, Shop and Barrier site groups were 78.5, 73.3, 68.7 and 70.8 dBA respectively and the overall mean of LAeq was 74.7 dBA. The statistical test (p<0.01) showed that the mean values for LAeq in all site groups as well as the overall mean value were higher than 65 dBA, which is the daytime governmentally prescribed noise limit for commercial areas. Comparing the individual measurements has also shown the 86.6% exceeded values from 65 dBA. The highest mean noise level in center frequencies upper than 1000 Hz was 71.5 dBA which was observed in the Street site group and the lowest one was 43.2 dBA in the Shop site group at 8000Hz center frequency. The corresponding values for the center frequencies lower than 1000 Hz were 78.2 and 66.1dBA at 63 and 500 Hz which were also observed in the Street and Shop site groups respectively. It can be concluded that the downtown of the city is environmentally noise polluted and the road traffic is the major source of it. Noting the noise emission standards, police control, and promoting the citizens awareness about the high level noise risk may help to relieve the noise problems in the city. Key word: Noise pollution, road traffic noise, sound pressure level, Tehran