Noise; final report : Presented to the Parliament ... July 1963.
- Great Britain. Committee on the Problem of Noise
- Date:
- [1963]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Noise; final report : Presented to the Parliament ... July 1963. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![noise of individual vehicles, the most frequent offenders, diesel-engined buses and commercial vehicles, are the most difficult to quieten. It will therefore be necessary to pay particular attention to the remaining lines of attack. SMOOTHING THE TRAFFIC FLOW 104. The second method is a matter of smoothing the traffic flow. Vehicles produce their maximum noise when they are accelerating in a low gear. Traffic noise can therefore be substantially reduced by minimising the number of occasions on which vehicles start and stop. 105. Those of us who have been to the United States found the traffic noise there generally less obtrusive than it is in this country. The traffic in most American cities is more homogeneous than it is in this country ; there are considerably fewer buses and, because of restrictions on the times at which deliveries are permitted, there are fewer lorries in the streets at peak traffic times. American cars, too, are generally higher powered than British cars and are seldom driven at high engine revolutions in towns. The use of linked traffic lights is widespread, and, because the flow of traffic is interrupted less frequently, drivers do not need to accelerate through the low gears as often as they do in most British cities. 106. In general, because of the layout of the streets, British towns do not lend themselves at present to as smooth a traffic flow as do American towns. But substantial improvements have been made in recent years, and much more can be done in the future, though often at considerable cost. These improvements have been made in order to reduce congestion, but, as we have said above, less congestion automatically means less noise. In many cases, however, the smoother traffic flow has been obtained by the intro- duction of one-way traffic which has diverted much of the traffic into neigh- bouring streets which were previously peaceful. 107. As we shall see in the next chapter, properly constructed buildings can be an effective protection against traffic noise, and fortunately buildings along major thoroughfares have in the past been solidly built. This has not always been so on the less important streets, and the spreading of heavy traffic, as distinct from private motor cars, into side roads and minor thoroughfares may therefore create a noise nuisance in these buildings even though the number of vehicles is not so great as to produce congestion in the street. In considering the re-routeing of traffic, local authorities should take into account not only the capacity of the roads to take more vehicles but also the quality and uses of the buildings along them. BY-PASSES AND RING-ROADS 108. The measures outlined in the preceding paragraphs are essentially methods of dealing with localised congestions and the noise nuisances they create. A more radical approach is to limit the numbers of vehicles which pass through a particular district, which is our*third method. This can be done by constructing by-passes and outer ring-roads, so as to reduce through traffic in the centres of towns, which, as we have already said, rarely have a street pattern conducive to a steady flow of a large number of vehicles. From the point of view of noise the proper siting of #4]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32177756_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
