Long-term monitoring can support noise mitigation

Continuous acoustic monitoring of railways is important to accurately assess the success or failure of noise mitigation measures, as experience from Switzerland suggests. In refining both railroad vehicle and track maintenance methods, it can also play an important role. The Federal Office for Transport (BAV) in Switzerland has been monitoring railway noise since the early 1970s, and it has been using six permanent monitoring stations to assess the effectiveness of various noise reduction measures since 2003.