The Acoustic Impact of Local Railway Lines

Local railway lines serve a regional traffic. They have few users since the service offered presents insufficient quality standards. These lines could have more users and they could become metropolitan connections by adopting new vehicles which are faster and more modern. This study has dealt with the current acoustical impact that they produce. Therefore, a number of acoustical measurements have been made along a local railway line. They have been carried out by varying the speed of the trains at a fixed measuring distance of 7.5 m and by varying the measuring distance with a single train speed. The obtained results have shown that current trains produce in the average a greater acoustical impact when compared to modern trains. This has been observed even at slow speeds and with reduced train lengths. Measurements made on a new train, that should soon start its service on the line, have shown that there would be no increase of the produced acoustical level, even with increased speeds. As a consequence, it may be concluded that the current service on the analyzed line could be enhanced by increasing the train speed and the number of runs, maintaining an equivalent daily analogous to the one currently guaranteed.