Perceived Noise Annoyance Caused by Maglev Trains. Management Summary.

• The annoyance impact in realistic settings of traffic noise was assessed for one, two or four train passages, primarily high-speed trains, or continuous road traffic noise. An innovative system for selecting representative participants from the Dutch population was implemented, as regards a number of critical variables (age, gender, level of education, noise sensitivity, reported anxiety, home exposure to train and road traffic noise, general quality of living environment, and general health). In total, 1500 candidate participants responded to the specifically constructed questionnaire with items from a nation-wide Dutch survey and the Eurobarometer. Participants with typical Dutch response profile were recruited on a first come, first serve basis (in total 80 plus 21 extra persons. In the experiment, 5-7 participants were seated to be relaxed and to be reading a magazine or newspaper. The were served refreshments. Traffic noise was reproduced in outdoor loudspeakers in an ecologically valid way. Every 10 min, participants were asked to assess noise annoyance. At the beginning and at brief intervals during the experiment, participants assessed the annoyance of a set of 7 reference sounds utilized for master scaling. At the same average façade exposure, no significant annoyance difference was neither found for Maglev and TGV, nor for conventional trains and the high-speed trains (only tested up to 65 dBA). The latter result contradicts Vos et al.’s earlier findings. Neugebauer at al.’s results fall within the spread in annoyance values due to distance to the track and vehicle speed that we observed. Field surveys have shown that for the same average sound level, railway noise evokes less annoyance than dense road traffic noise, at least for a certain interval of levels. Although our experiment included several of the factors that may contribute to this effect, we were unable to observe this kind of effect, except for the case when the sounds were recorded at a distance of more than 100 m.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

train noise

annoyance

master scaling

Psychology

Psykologi

Environmental psychology

Miljöpsykologi

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vet (ämneskategori)

rap (ämneskategori)