Valuing transport noise impacts in public urban spaces in the UK: Gaps, opportunities and challenges

Abstract

Transport noise is the dominant noise source in urban areas. Its impacts on people at their residential locations are included in economic appraisal in the UK and many other countries, and guidance and analysis tools were developed for the valuation of the impacts. However, for transport noise impacts on people in public urban spaces, e.g., urban streets, squares and parks, there is still a lack of national methodologies. This paper will discuss the gaps, opportunities and challenges in developing a national methodology for these places in the UK. Currently, evidence is lacking on pathways of transport noise impact on people and dose–response relationships at non-residential locations, and the values people place on sound environment quality at these locations. However, opportunities are emerging, with increasing attention to the urban realm in UK transport policy, and recent progress and transitions in urban sound environment research, including association between public health and urban soundscape, standardisation in soundscape research and practice, and crowdsourcing sound environment evaluations. The associated challenges, as compared to methodology for residential locations, may include calculating noise from non-free-flow traffic, defining and adding diverse receptor types, estimating dynamic affected population, accounting for diversity in level and source of background sound, and obtaining large and consistent data for dose–response or willingness-to-pay analyses.