Annoyance and sleep disturbance due to vibrations from trains in the Netherlands: results from the second study "Living Alongside Railway Tracks"

Abstract

In 2013, RIVM investigated how people, living in the vicinity of railways, experience vibrations due to trains. As a follow-up, and in response to questions from Parliament on the expansion of the Dutch rail network, the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water management commissioned a second study and a repeated measurement of the persons who participated in 2013. This abstract focusses on the second study. The most important objective of this study was to derive exposure-response relationships between exposure to vibrations caused by trains and annoyance and sleep disturbance. The results are important for the further development of policy, and possibly also regulations, on railway vibration in The Netherlands. For this second study, 16.000 people living within 300 meters of a railway track were invited to participate. By means of an online questionnaire, that was administered in September 2021, information was gathered about annoyance, sleep disturbance due vibrations and noise from trains and the determinants of those. The participants' exposure to vibrations from trains was estimated by means of an improved version of the Dutch calculation model for railway vibrations n (OURS). During the conference, the first findings will be presented.