Noise awareness day: Minister should make noise protection "top ministerial priority"

Berlin. The German Pro-Rail Alliance has called on federal transport minister Peter Ramsauer from the CSU to make traffic noise protection a "top ministerial priority".  To-date, the federal government's transport policies have been defined per coalition agreement according to the credo that transport should be facilitated and not hindered. "As far as traffic noise and people's health is concerned, this growth mantra reached its limits years ago," said Dirk Flege, managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, in Berlin to mark International Noise Awareness Day.

When it comes to railway noise, the federal government must finally start to think strategically to overcome the trade-off between getting more traffic on to the railways and also protecting people's health in several German regions. "A concept for how the ministry's target of 'halving railway noise by 2020' can be achieved without affecting the economically efficient rail freight system in its competition with road freight has still not been presented by Minister Ramsauer," criticised the railway alliance's managing director. In this respect he is "a minister with a target but no concept".

The Pro-Rail Alliance believes that the ederal government's noise abatement programme for railways lines, which has been in existence for ten years, "puts too much focus on noise barriers and too little on combating the source of the noise." If the programme continues without changes, the federal government's noise reduction targets "will in all probability not be achieved." To-date, the regional and national discussions for introducing a noise level component to track charges are still out of line with the government's other target of getting more traffic onto the railways.

According to a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report, one in three people feel disturbed by traffic noise during the day, and one in five say that their sleep is affected. In the report, the WHO's regional office for Europe classifies noise as "threat to public health".

A recent poll by the Federal Environment Agency found that 36 percent of Germans are extremely or strongly disturbed by road traffic noise, 20 percent of Germans by aircraft noise and 11.5 percent by noise from the railways.