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 surfacerneffects on traffic noise in New Zealand urban areas where vehicle speeds are typically 50 km/h.rnTherefore low noise road surfaces could have much greater benefit in reducing communityrnannoyance with noise in urban areas than was previously thought.rnA drive-by technique, which captures both the noise level and a spectral distribution of the noisernfrom test vehicles and samples of actual vehicles within vehicle streams, was used to measure thernnoise from a range of road surfaces. It was found that, at 40-50kmph, when compared to denserngraded asphalt, the most commonly used road surfaces (the chip surfaces) may be 3 to 6dBA noisierrnfor cars, and 0 to 2dBA noisier for trucks. These effects are much larger than is anticipated byrncommonly used road noise models.rnPopulations adjacent to roads being resurfaced were surveyed using both annoyance andrnbehavioural scales. It was found that surface type was significant in influencing traffic noisernannoyance of people living next to the roads, and that changes in behaviour could be detected forrnvery small changes in noise, i.e. less than 2dBA