NOISE COSTS - External noise costs due to road and rail traffic in Switzerland
Overview
Background & policy context:
The Federal Office for Spatial Development is currently reconsidering all external effects caused by road and rail traffic.
The available data were partly based on relatively old calculations which are now brought up to date. Thus safety (accidents), health costs and damage to buildings due to air pollution as well as noise are evaluated.
Objectives:
The objective of the present study is to establish the external noise costs caused by road and rail traffic in Switzerland in the year 2000.
The results are to be broken down into costs originating from passenger and from freight transport. Within the framework of the study i
t is not possible to cover all implications of noise. As ordered, this investigation into the costs of noise is thus limited to the spheres of residential usage (fall in rent payments, since demand on the housing market is lower for homes exposed to noise than for comparable homes in quiet locations) and human health (noise pollution can result in physical and mental disorders and can damage health).
Further cost components, such as losses arising from the exclusion or non-inclusion of land in zoning plans, costs caused by attempts to escape noise, and difficulties in concentrating at school and at work, are consequently not covered by the present study.
Methodology:
The following methodological approach has been chosen to establish noise costs:
The basis of monetarisation is a detailed investigation into noise pollution caused by road and rail traffic in Switzerland in the year 2000.
On the basis of the number of homes exposed to noise, lost rent payments are to be established. This requires the determination of the relationship between rent levels and noise pollution, and of the average rent level.
Exposure to noise also results in additional damage to health. Firstly, the link between noise pollution and poor health is established and then used as a basis for calculating noise-related incidences of illness and death. These are then converted into monetary units.
The sum of lost rent payments and health costs gives the total cost of the noise produced by traffic. It is impossible to calculate the costs of noise without first making assumptions and simplifications.
This project is therefore based on the principle of being 'as realistic as possible but, if in doubt, conservative'.
In practice this means that, wherever uncertainties exist, the assumptions that have been made are cautious and will tend to result in actual costs being underestimated rather than overestimated. In the literature, this principle is often referred to as the 'at least approach'.
Share this page