Abstract
The control of environmental noise is becoming of increasing importance to the European Commission. As a result, they have recently instigated a set of legislative initiatives in order to prevent increases in noise exposure for the population and, where possible, to reduce that exposure. This paper introduces current European Union environmental noise policy, as implemented through the Environmental Noise Directive of 2002, and describes the work of the related research projects “HARMONOISE” and “IMAGINE.” The paper then focuses on railway-specific issues, with detail of the railway noise prediction methodology developed within these projects, including the source database that is now in place. In parallel, the Commission has introduced, within railway Technical Specifications for Interoperability, noise emission limits for new and refurbished trains, as a means of progressively reducing railway noise at source. The noise elements of these Specifications are described and discussed.
