Speaker
Description
The Porto Metro is a light rail network in Porto, Portugal, in operation since 2002 and currently in expansion. One of the factors that was relevant during its construction was the acoustic quality of the subway stations, particularly reverberation time control. The Portuguese acoustics legislation requires this parameter to be under a maximum value, for all types of passenger transportation stations, to improve speech intelligibility, particularly important for safety and travel information.To guide the acoustical design and construction works supervision of several new stations of this network, a measurement campaign was planned and executed during 2022. This paper describes the methodology and results of speech transmission index, reverberation time and background noise from 13 existing subway stations. The results obtained are discussed in relation to the efficiency of acoustic materials applied and recent maintenance works, as well as recommendations for future planning of new stations.