Community reactions to noise from freely flowing traffic,motorway traffic and congested traffic flow

Responses to a social survey were collected from residents of 27 different sites in the Greater Manchester area. The sites were exposed to noise emanating from (a) freely flowing traffic on urban roads, or (b) motorway traffic, or (c) congested or disturbed traffic flow on urban roads. Existing noise indices were tested on this general sample of traffic flow situations to determine their efficacy in the prediction of community dissatisfaction to traffic noise. No existing index could handle adequately all the traffic flow conditions. When the indices were combined with measures of traffic volume flow between midnight and 6 a.m. a marked improvement in their predictive capability was noted. In particular, extended indices based on L₁₀ (18 hour) and L_eq appeared to be useful predictors of community response to all of the traffic flow situations studied in this project.