Novel Legislation for Railway Lines and Motorways in The Netherlands

Abstract

In 2012 The Netherlands Parliament agreed to a revision of the national Noise Legislation, including the introduction of Noise Production Ceilings for national motorways and railways [1]. Ceiling values are derived from the current calculated noise levels at a large number of reference points along the road or track. Ceiling values are open to the general public. The infrastructure manager is responsible that the ceiling values are respected at all times, i.e. including due to traffic growth. Within the ceiling values he then has an autonomous right to implement mitigation measures or even to apply changes to the track, without further legal procedure. To residents the new system offers more certainty with respect to their future noise situation. To the infrastructure manager it offers flexibility to tune the railway’s capacity to the transport demand without lengthy legal procedures. The system suffers from low credibility both with the general public and with politicians. To a certain extent this is due to the complexity of the first implementation of the system. The low credibility leads to a strong wish to check calculated levels by means of measurements. The next few years, after the first implementation problems have been solved, will decide if and how measurements can solve the credibility problem.