Effects of Road Texture on Traffic Noise and Annoyance at Urban Driving Speeds

摘要

This paper describes work that has found that insufficient allowance is being made for road surfaceeffects on traffic noise in New Zealand urban areas where vehicle speeds are typically 50 km/h.Therefore low noise road surfaces could have much greater benefit in reducing communityannoyance with noise in urban areas than was previously thought.A drive-by technique, which captures both the noise level and a spectral distribution of the noisefrom test vehicles and samples of actual vehicles within vehicle streams, was used to measure thenoise from a range of road surfaces. It was found that, at 40-50kmph, when compared to densegraded asphalt, the most commonly used road surfaces (the chip surfaces) may be 3 to 6dBA noisierfor cars, and 0 to 2dBA noisier for trucks. These effects are much larger than is anticipated bycommonly used road noise models.Populations adjacent to roads being resurfaced were surveyed using both annoyance andbehavioural scales. It was found that surface type was significant in influencing traffic noiseannoyance of people living next to the roads, and that changes in behaviour could be detected forvery small changes in noise, i.e. less than 2dBA.