STAIRRS: Strategies and tools to assess and implement noise reducing measures for railway systems

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 99.0411-2

Key words (English)

Calculation of Costs and Benefits; Cost-Efficiency-Analysis; Perpetual Approach

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: 1999-RD.10442

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.3.2 Sustainable mobility and intermodality

Short description (English)

See abstract

Further information (English)

Full name of research-institution/enterprise:
ETH Zürich
Departement Umweltnaturwissenschaften
Umweltnatur- und Umweltsozialwissenschaften

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Coordinator: Stichting european rail research inst., Utrecht (NL)

Abstract (English)

ETH - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
A9.1 Analysis of the Sustainability of Railway Traffic Noise Reduction
Measures:
The Sustainability Analysis of Railway Traffic Noise Reduction Measures starts from the
knowledge gained in the ETH UNS Case Studies 1999 and 2000 on Swiss Railways. This part
of the project has started in 2001 and will continue during the rest of the project. The goal of
the sustainability analysis is, to find a robust solution in the sense that a positive ratio of costs
and benefits can be maintained in a long term (eco-efficiency). On that time scale, significant
changes of individual value structures, of the societal environment, of societal demand
structures and of technology portfolios can influence basic boundary conditions of the
STAIRRS evaluation of noise reduction measures. The sustainability analysis must therefore
encompass an assessment of the uncertainty and robustness of the calculations including a
sensitivity analysis of expected and unexpected changes.
A9.2 Evaluation of Costs and Benefits of Railway Traffic Noise Reduction
Measures:
The Evaluation of Costs and Benefits of Railway Traffic Noise Reduction Measures aims at
the evaluation and possibly optimisation of noise abatement strategies for railway traffic on a
European scale. The noise abatement strategies, which are developed using the EURANO
software build the input to these calculations. ETH UNS are cooperating with ULB and other
partners to create a spreadsheet program, which includes different variants of cost and benefit
calculation. ETH UNS proposed to calculate this as perpetual annuities including the costs
and benefits of the removal (e.g. of noise barriers).

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 99.0411-2