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The managing director of Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege, calls for a ban on noisy freight train wagons. (Photo: Pro-Rail Alliance
German pressure group wants to stop noisy freight trains
Published: Tue, 2015-05-05 06:56- Likes 3
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Noise makes people ill
54 percent of Germans suffer from road traffic noise, 21 percent are disturbed by aircraft noise, and 17 percent complain about noisy trains.
On International Noise Awareness Day, the German Pro-Rail Alliance demanded noisy freight train wagons to be banned from the end of 2020.
- The railway sector needs binding regulations so that it can be more aggressive in tackling the government’s target of halving noise from the railways while being able to plan in the long-term, said the managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege, on Tuesday in Berlin.
Flege said that his organization does not want that railways, the most environmentally friendly form of transport, to lose the public’s goodwill.
According to the latest study by the German Environment Agency UBA ‘Environmental Awareness in Germany 2014’, 17 percent of Germans feel disturbed by noise from the railways,whereas 54 percent complain about road traffic noise and 21 percent about aircraft noise. The Pro-Rail Alliance warned against simply shrugging off the issue of noise from the railways.
Since 2013, the government has been supporting the retrofitting of noisy freight wagons with low-noise braking technology.
- When this funding programme runs out in 2020, the owners of freight wagons in Germany need to be certain that their expensive efforts were not in vain. People affected by noise also want to finally see much more progress, said the managing director of Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege.
The rail sector has already reported its first successes. At the end of 2014, 12 percent of all train path kilometers used by freight trains were classed as ‘low noise’, which per definition means that a train must be made up of wagons in the low noise category.
Source: Pro-Rail Alliance
Av Markku Björkman
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