Experimental study of traffic noise and human response in an urban area: deviations from standard annoyance predictions

Annoyance and sleep disturbance by road and rail traffic noise in an urban area are investigated. Noise levels Lden and Lnight are determined with an engineering noise model that is optimized for the local situation, based on local noise measurements. The noise levels are combined with responses of 71 inhabitants to an annoyance survey to derive local exposure-response relations, using the regression method with censored normal distributions developed by Miedema and coworkers. It is found that the local exposure-response relations deviate considerably from the 'standard' relations derived from international annoyance surveys. Noise events reported by the inhabitants - such as freight trains passing through the area at night - Are described to illustrate the local situation. Future scenarios for the urban area are also analyzed, including measures aimed at reducing road and rail traffic noise. Numbers of highly-annoyed inhabitants in the urban area are calculated for different scenarios by applying the local exposure-response relations to the total population in the area of about 1000 inhabitants.