A STUDY ON URBAN TRANSPORT ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION

Abstract

Urbanization is increasing at a faster pace in India ,which is evident by the fact that the number of metropolitan cities has increased from 12 to 23 between 1981 to 1991.The growth of vehicles in the metropolitan cities is much higher ( 22.7 % per annum) than that of urban population (4.41 % per annum).Rapid urbanisation and consequent alarming growth of vehicles has been causing serious environmental probiems.Therefore there is need to study urban transport environment interaction and consequent impacts to enable better planning in managing the air,noise pollution problems.Air pollution aspect has been well documented and their effects are obivious,on the other hand effects of noise pollution is severe in long term and effects cannot be conclusively said and usually ignored. In India several efforts were made in the the area of traffic noise prediction models,but these models does not take into account important parameters such as average speed of the traffic,geometric parameters,road surface charactersics and presence of barrier. Thus, there is a need to develop noise prediction model taking into account above mentioned factors,so that suitable remedial measures can be worked out. Traffic noise prediction models throught the world differ in some respects,but overall,the methodology is similiar.All the noise prediction models consists_ of-evaluating basic noise levels and making series of adjustments to take into accountgeometric,traffic flow and barrier data. FHWA and CORTN_models are based on the above concept. In the present study an effort has been made to- develop-the -traffic_noise prediction model based on the- above concept.In this process individual vehicle noise iii levels has been collected and analysed.Effect of roughness ,barrier on the noise levels have been studied, for this purpose five sites have been selected in which four sites are in Delhi and one site is on SH-45, Roorkee city. A software package for Traffic Noise Prediction and Mitigative Measures (TNP-MM) has been developed.This software package_perfonas_two_task.s,one is-the noise prediction given the geometric,traffic flow, barrier input. Second one is- the barrier design ,wherein the software calculates height of the barrier to be provided to achieve particular noise levels given the geometric, traffic flow, position of the barrier through iteration process. Mitigative measures such-as construction of barrier,type of bituminous surface material and banning heavy vehicles passing through silence zones have been studied and results have been compared.