Railway bonus for noise disturbance in laboratory settings

Abstract

Disturbance caused by railway and road traffic noises in simulated outdoor (noise levels at L_{Aeq, 6 min} of 55, 65 and 75 dB) and indoor (noise levels at L_{Aeq, 6 min} of 35, 45 and 55 dB) conditions was investigated in laboratory settings. In each experiment, 30 Japanese and 30 Chinese subjects were requested to perform auditory (listening) and non-auditory (calculation) tasks while each noise was presented for 6 minutes, and then to assess the disturbance caused by the noises using 5-point verbal scales constructed by the ICBEN method. The results showed that though some railway bonus caused by noise masking did exist for auditory task in the outdoor conditions, no railway bonus was found for the other situations. On the contrary, in the indoor conditions, railway noise was evaluated to be a little more disturbing to the activities than road traffic noise by the subjects in most cases. Though the Japanese subjects appeared to be more sensitive to noises than the Chinese subjects, no systematic difference was found between the two subject groups.