Are All Noises the Same? A Laboratory Simulation Experiment on Human Response to Road and Rail Traffic Noise

Principal Investigator:
Lam, Kin Che

Co-investigator(s):
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Summary:
In Hong Kong, the recent transport policy favours rail instead of road building resulting in the gradual extension of the rail network into New Town and relatively quiet rural areas. Past research in Western countries suggested that people are more tolerant to rail noise than to road traffic noise of the same intensity, although the reasons for this discrepancy were not well known. This long-held notion has recently been challenged by a study of human response to rail noise in Japan. Because there are a host of acoustical and non-acoustical factors which may affect human response, this study adopts a laboratory simulation approach which subjects the respondents to digitally recorded, mastered and mixed rail and road traffic noise of various intensity and frequency and with different background to elucidate the complex noise-human annoyance relationship. Findings of the simulation experiment will help narrow down the scale of any social survey needed to resolve the research problem. They may also have significant implications on the formulation of environmental standards and noise control policies.