Speaker
Description
Rail traffic is considered a sustainable mode of transport for people and goods. Nevertheless, rail traffic contributes significantly to noise pollution in Europe. Previous studies suggest that established A-weighted sound pressure level metrics describe the evoked noise annoyance by railway noise only to a limited extent. In addition to psychoacoustic factors, non-acoustic factors (e.g., visual aspects) can also influence noise annoyance. The increased availability of immersive audiovisual recording and playback techniques enables the investigation of such factors in laboratory experiments with high audiovisual plausibility. To this end, we carried out audiovisual train pass-by measurements along two different railways with noise abatement measures (earth embankment, noise barrier) in Germany and Austria. The employed sensor setup was based on EN ISO 3095 and extended with an artificial head, a 3rd-order Ambisonics microphone and a 360-degree video camera. Selected pass-by recordings were used in audiovisual experiments to rate the noise annoyance according to an ISO/TS 15666 scale along with relative magnitude estimation tasks. Besides an investigation of the influence of the noise abatement measures in an audiovisual context, the influence of the playback mode was also examined. While the noise abatement measures expectedly led to a reduction of the annoyance ratings, no clear effect of the presentation mode (audio vs. audiovisual) on noise annoyance was observed. This work contains parts from the research project „Perception-based evaluation of railway noise abatement measures “, initiated by the German Centre for Rail Traffic Research at the Federal Railway Authority, and contributes to the acceptance of rail traffic.