Blanka Hablovicova

This paper focuses on noise modelling and the assessment of road noise impacts in relation to residential areas and economic costs using modelling. The intention of the whole project and the authors' work is to contribute to the determination of changes in road noise levels for relevant decision-making processes with direct applicability in social sciences (regional development, sociology, demography, economics) related to health risk assessment (public health). The longevity, noise reduction levels and external cost changes of using low noise roads should therefore be appreciated. The purpose is to remove the identified disparity and to make publicly available, through a certified methodology, the data needed to assess the long-term effects of noise pollution from low-noise roads for use by regional development, thus contributing to the strategy of Directive 2002/49/EC.

In this study, results from long-term monitoring of the tyre/road noises of the exposed aggregate cement concrete (EACC) with the highest grain size of 8 mm and stone mastic asphalt (SMA) surface with the highest grain size of 11 mm performed by close-proximity (CPX) method are presented. There are certain concerns that the EACC surface will have inferior noise properties than SMA. These concerns are based on previous experience with the cement concrete surface with transverse tining texture which is very noisy. The main aim of this article is to demonstrate that these concerns are unfounded. A section of the motorway was chosen for the measuring and the testing speed for all measurements was 80 km·h⁻¹. Provisional results (based on six years of monitoring) show that the noise levels measured on both these surface types are similar over their lifetime and exhibit logarithmic acoustic behaviour.