By Working Group Noise a brief response is drafted towards the European Commision. This response comprises 12 recommendations which are in line with previous documents like EUROCITIES Position Paper on the END and will be sent to the European Commission, the advisory institutions (COR, EESC, etc.) and to the Members of Parliament as far as they are involved in this dossier.  After approval by the chairman of the EUROCITIES Environmental Forum (EEF) and the ExCom the response will be sent to all parties and a brief summary will be published on this weblog.

On 24 January 2012 a symposium on Urban Noise Management will be held inFlorence. Tis symposium is built around the EU funded projects HUSH, NADIA and QUADMAP. The first two are supported by Working Group Noise by delivering input. The last one QUADMAP, is a project on Management of Quiet Urban Areas and a lot of members of WG Noise are involved. They will have a podium in Florence as well. Registration for this symposium can be means of sending an email to gessica.pecchioni@comune.it

The spring meeting of Working Group Noise EUROCITIES will be hosted by the city of Amsterdam on the 19th and 20th of April. Theme for this meeting will be “Electrication of transport”. The meeting will be structured in four parts,

1. Formalities, like approval of the agenda, welcome, minutes, action list, etc.
2. Sharing of knowledge and experiences by means of the theme mentioned above.
3. European agenda, like the Environmental Noise Directive, CNOSSOS, Vehicle directive and Horizon 2020 and opportunities for noise.
4. Round table, sharing information and experiences from cities and projects.

Each member and agenda member is invited to send in suggestions for the four parts of the meeting. More information, like the venue and the draft agenda will be published on this site in January 2012.

The European Commission has published a draft regulation regarding stricter noise levels (ELV’s) for passenger cars, vans, buses and trucks. Existing emission limit values are proposed to go down in two stages.
As announced in an earlier meeting in spring, ELV’s for cars, vans and buses will first drop by 2 decibels two years after entry into force, expected in 2013/14, and by another 2 dB three years later. Those for trucks by 1 dB respectively 2 dB. The existing ELV’s from the directive 70/157, amended in 2007, are higher than those used to calculate the new values because of a new, more precise, noise measurement method applied by the commission. As a result, existing limits were revised down by about 2 dB, except for lorries whose limit went up by 1 dB to 81 dB(A). The proposal means that ELV’s for cars, set at 74 dB(A) in the 2007, will drop from 72 to 70 dB(A) in stage 1 of the new proposed legislation and drop to 68 dB(A) in the second stage. The limit for trucks are supposed to drop to 80 dB(A) first and to 78 dB(A) during later. The new method introduced in ECs proposal nears driving conditions more closely. Other proposals in the draft regulation mentions the introduction of additional sound emission provisions and noise features for hybrid and electric vehicles to increase pedestrian safety. Working Group Noise EUROCITIES is convinced that these steps are not enough. Regarding reports and letters (CAETS, 2011) it is possible to reduce more, even with existing technology. Working Group Noise proposal to the European Commission would be to introduce stricter ELV’s (up to 5-6 dB) for the two stages and to introduce more steps beyond stage 2 of Commissions’ proposal. The Commissions’proposal could be found here:

On 23 November a workshop “Paving the way for a quieter Europe” was held in the building of the European Union. The meeting was organised by Member of Parlement, Mr. Tatarella who presided the first part of the workshop. The second part was presided by the chairman of Working group Noise EUROCITIES, Mr. Henk Wolfert. For more information and the presentations that were given, see website ERF

Next summer INTERNOISE2012 will be held in New York from 19-23 August. During this congress Working Group Noise will organise a one day meeting. During that meeting cities worldwide are invited to participate. If you’re interested to join us, let us know and contact the chairman of WG Noise, Mr. Henk Wolfert.
Besides the meeting to be held, Mr. Wolfert, together with Ms. Miriam Weber of DCMR EPA, will organise a theme with 6 sessions. We call upon papers which can be submitted (abstracts) via the website of internoise

Working Group Noise has met in Turin on the 26th and the 27th of September 2011. Aftwer the welcome by the chairman of working group noise, Mr. Henk Wolfert, we were welcomed by a representative of the international office of the city of Turin, Ms. Scalasi and the deputy-major of Turin, Mr. Enzo Lavolta. The draft report of Transport and Environment on Road Traffic Noise was discussed and we agreed to send a letter of support to T&E because stricter ELV’s for vehicles are needed. The revising of the vehicle directive is expected in autumn this year. Besides supporting the report of T&E we will also send an reaction to the Directorate General of Industry (DGENTR) to convince them that stricter ELV’s are needed and that the proposal which is published doesn’t meet our expectations. According to reports and investigations doen, reductions up to 5-6 dB should be feasible at this moment. Technology is on the shelf yet! During the round table held it appeared that the progress of the second round has been started but expectations are poor due to the budgets available. Action plans didn’t contain many measures and their nature was more strategic. It was reported that drafting the second round, new methods and software will be used which means that comparability between maps from the first round and the second round isn’t possible! This implies that there is an inevitable need for the harmonised assessment methods more than ever.
By mr. Fogola from ARPA Piemonte a presentation was done about the insulation performance of new buildings in Turin. The outcomes were rather poor, most of the houses didn’t met the legal standards.
Regarding the Environmental Noise Directive it was agreed that a new memo should be sent,to the European Commission representing the position of EUROCITIES. This memo will be drived from the Position paper on the END, that was published in 2009 and will comprise some new elements and will underlines the need for source based measures and cumulative noise maps (valuable for public communication). By Igone Garcia (Tecnalia) a splendid presentaion was done about restorative soundscape. The study used a sophisticated conceptual model. Two situations were created with different values for the Sound Atmosphere Indicator (developed in co-operation with Bruitparif); one natural, and one with extra negative sound. The amount of stress was established by a combination of 4 indicators. Result: in Natural SSC restoration to induced stress is more intense and faster.  By Oslo (Ellen Johnson) a presentation was done about quiet areas. Oslo’s approach consist of the following steps:

1. Defineprinciples for good soundscapes
2. Define principles for attractive quiet area
3. Define parameters for:
a. Soundscapes
b. The use of a soundscape and/or a quiet area
c. The usability of a soundscape and/or a quiet area
4. Usethese definitions to create an analysis of an area
5. Make a manual for the presentation of the results of this analysis

At the end of the first day a sparkling presentation was held by Prof. Pronello about valuation of noise related to perceived noise. The second day a number of presentation was held as well. Construction noise was presented by Prof. Masoero and Ms. Igone Garcia.

More information can be found in the minutes of this meeting which can be asked via the secretary of Working Group Noise, ms. Patricia van Rixoort.

The autumn meeting of the Working Group Noise will be held in Turin on the 26^th and the 27^th of September 2011. The preliminary agenda comprises a lot of interesting agenda points. The most relevant agenda points are:

• welcome by the city of Turin
• announcements from EUROCITIES office
• introduction new members
• round table, update and exchanging experiences on projects running in our cities
• controls about acoustic insulation new residential buildings by ARPA Piemonte
• bad practices in (sub)urban planning and noise by Province of Turin
• response to European Commission on review Environmental Noise Directive
• update CNOSSOS
• progress Position Paper on Urban Transport by Utrecht and DCMR EPA
• monetary evaluation of transport noise social costs by Polytechnical Turin
• construction noise in Bilbao by Labein Technalia
• update questionnaire on construction noise by DCMR EPA
• environmental management of large constructions site in dense populated area
• speech intelligibility for primary school children in different condition by Polytecnico Torino
• local noise policy and the impact on actual building design by Utrecht
• role to play at INTERNOISE 2012 in New York
• preview spring meeting Amsterdam

A final agenda will be published in the mid of September. All interested cities, being a member of EUROCITIES are free to participate in this meeting or to contribute. Also third parties that represent those cities are welcome to participate. Please contact mrs. van Rixoort or mr. Wolfert for registration.

On the 6^th and the 7^th of April a meeting of Working Group Noise of EUROCITIES was held in Gdansk. Venue of the meeting was the New City Hal in the centre of Gdansk. After a brief welcome by the interim-chairman Mr.Ronald de Jong all participants were welcomed by the representative of Gdansk, Mr. Maciej Lorek, head of the Environmental Department of the city of Gdansk. A special word of welcome was sent to the representatives of the city of Bydgoszs, mrs. Beata Kempa and Mr.Grzegorz Boron and to mr. Federico Saporiti from Turin. Due to a delay of the plane of the chairman some changes were made in the draft agenda. The draft agenda was approved by the members. During the following acquaintance round a brief overview about modified asphalt was given by mr. Saporiti. This type of asphalt was applied in Turin and the first experiences, according to mr.Saporiti are very hopeful. After this a round table was held and every member has been invited to bring new topics and the progress of preparing the second round of noise mapping on the table. Regarding to the report that was drafted by Dublin, the questionnaire about noise from large scale outdoor events, it was decided that a presentation should be done during the meeting of the Working Group Greening the Local Economy to be held in Zurich in May.  

After the round table, the chairman of the Working Group Noise took over the meeting and started with the announcements from EUROCITIES office. During this point a slight change in the rules (regulation) was proposed by the chairman. Because the participants didn’t have a sufficient mandate it was decided that the proposal should be brought to the propound managers of each individual member. Another point was the proposal done by the city of Rotterdam about quiet tyres. This proposal is to produce noise maps, based on replacement of existing tyres by the New or Quieter Tyre on all vehicles or a share of the vehicles and, based on that map, to estimate the reduce of exposed people. This was already done by the city of Rotterdam, and the example showed that the reduction of exposed people is significant (28%). The proposal will be sent in a few weeks to all EUROCITIES cities and especially to the members of EUROCITIES’ Working Group Noise inviting them to join this initiative. Based on the outcomes of this exercise we could lobby for more better tyres, especially during the review of the tyre regulation which is foreseen in 2013. to be clear, this is one of the two proposals done by the city of Rotterdam. The other proposal is regarding the covenant on Better Tyres. This proposal was explained to the Mobility Forum which has met last week in Budapest. It will also be explained to the Green Procurement working group.  

During the morning session a local broadcasting company was also present and some of the participants have been interviewed by the journalist of the local broadcast company. By the chairman the progress of CNOSSOS was reported. The WGN expresses her concerns about the poor progress that was made and also about the opposite attitude some MS have.  Members were invited to complete the draft letter on this subject and which will be addressed to the European Commission and the members of the ENVI Committee of the European Parliament. 

The signals received from the DG environment are a bit disappointing. It was concluded that the proposals done to improve the Environmental Noise Directive will not be embraced by the top of DG Environment. By our WGN a letter will be sent to the DG Environment to plea for more ambitions and we will refer to the report that was published by the WHO (Environmental Burden of Disease), see also below. WGN should be very disappointed if the END will not be improved. 

By mr. Piotr Modiuszewski from the Technical University of Gdansk a presentation was done about the PERSUADE project. This project which has 7 partners is aimed to make further improvements in PoroElastic Asphalt. A first report about the progress of this project was published last week. If the durability of this type of asphalt could be improved then a huge pace could be made because the acoustical properties of this kind of asphalt are really promising! More information about this project can be obtained on the website of this project (www.fehrl-persuade.org), see elsewhere on this weblog. 

After lunch an overview was given about the developments in traffic (technical, demographic and political) by the chairman of WGN. Special attention was given to the Brussels developments on quiet tyres, Emission Limit Values (ELV’s) of cars and trucks in relation to the CARS21 memorandum and the White Paper on Transport, which was published recently by the European Commission. In these papers some important developments are mentioned like the proposed reduction of the ELV’s for passenger cars and HGV. Reductions proposed to go up to 4 dB for passenger cars and 3 dB for HGV. Technological seen reductions could even be higher according to a former presentation of Heinz Steven (TüVNord) during the CALM network meetings. After this overview, a discussion in sub-groups took place followed by a plenary discussion. The outcomes of the discussion will be included in the Position Paper on Urban Transport. 

The second day the just published report from WHO “Burden of Environmental Disease” was presented by Dr. Rokho Kim. The total loss of healthy life years expressed in DALY’s amounts at least 1 million per annum. Expressed in euro’s the annual costs amount € 75 million/a. Noise is the second on the ranking of lost healthy life years on the list of environmental factors. Only air pollution causes more DALY’s, about twice as much. 

After the presentation of Dr. Kim we discussed about the role this report should play in near future. We defined a number of messages that should be addressed toward the local authorities and to the European Union. The outcomes of this report are very welcome to persuade the politicians that a more effective approach on noise is wanted/needed. 

The next meeting of Working Group Noise will be held in October in Turin, see the column on the left hand side.

On the 6th and 7th of April Working Group Noise will meet at Gdansk. During the meeting a number of interesting agenda points will be discussed. The most important agenda points are listed below:

- Leaflet Quiet Road Surfaces

- Position Paper on Urban Transport (Noise)

- Position Paper on Noise and  Health

- Round table on progress 1st round and preparations 2nd round of Noise Mapping and Noise Action Planning

- Progress of CNOSSOS, the harmonised assessment method

- Sight seeing the noise monitoring system on Gdansk Airport (Lech Walesa)

- PERSUADE project about poro-elastci asphalt project                     

Working Group Noise  has invited mr. Rokho Kim of the World Health Organisation to present the report on Environmental Burden of Disease on Noise. This presentation will be the start of the process on drafting EUROCITIES Position Paper on Noise and Health which will be published in spring 2012. 

Beside the members and agenda members of Working Group Noise, all other cities being a member of EUROCITIES are welcome to participate.

 On friday the 8th of April the first meeting of the sub group FONOMOC, see below, will take place in Gdansk as well. More information can be obtained by henk.wolfert@dcmr.nl