Noise, especially from transport sources, has emerged as a recognised environmental and public health issue which needs to be appropriately addressed. Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) provides sustainable transport infrastructure and services in Ireland, delivering a better quality of life, supporting economic growth, and respecting the environment. As part of this purpose, noise and its well-established interconnected links to adverse economic, environmental and social impacts, is an issue that TII has identified as requiring more consideration. It is important that clear guidance relating to transport noise is available to ensure the negative externalities associated with noise emissions are minimised while also delivering sustainable transport options. In addition, to ensure that TII maintains its social mandate to construct, operate and maintain national roads, the real cost of noise impacts must be assessed.

TII, formerly the National Roads Authority (NRA), has a strong history in the assessment and treatment of noise from major roads in Ireland, and has shown leadership in the development and publication of guidance documents. Notably, the NRA draft guidelines for the treatment of noise and vibration on national road schemes, published in 2004, were the first ever Irish guidelines governing the assessment of noise associated with either new or existing roads. These draft guidelines provided explicit guidance on how noise should be addressed during the development stages of a road scheme. Following a review of the draft guidelines 6 months after their implementation, the final document was revised and published in October 2004 (NRA, 2004). In the following years several major research projects were initiated by the NRA and this work resulted in several national guidance documents, including a 2014 Good Practice Guidance for the Treatment of Noise during the Planning of National Road Schemes, which was developed following an extensive post-EIA review of 20 projects (NRA, 2014).

Since the 2004 guidelines were released there have been significant changes in best practice for the assessment and management of environmental noise (including road traffic noise). The World Health Organization (WHO) developed revised “Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region” in 2018, updating its recommendations for environmental noise in Europe to protect public health. The recommendations include revised guidance for road traffic (amongst other sources) and recommendations are based on the systematic review of the evidence base linking environmental noise and adverse health effects. A further significant development in recent years is the amendment of Annex III of the END (Environmental Noise Directive) in 2020 with the ratification of Commission Directive (EU) 2020/367. The latter refers to the provision of dose effect relations in the assessment of harmful effects caused by environmental noise and describes how harmful effects may be calculated for ischemic heart disease (IHD), high annoyance (HA) and high sleep disturbance (HSD) for road, rail, and aircraft noise for EU Member States. The significance of this development cannot be understated; the determining of the extent of environmental noise associated harmful effects has now been standardised across EU Member States.

In parallel, there have been significant changes in the calculation methods for noise impact predictions. While the 2004 NRA Guidelines recommend the use of the UK’s CRTN calculation methodology, with Irish specific conversion factors, it is now recognised that this method has some significant limitations (outlined in ANITA Project Report 2.) and it is now an appropriate time to consider a new calculation method for use on proposed road schemes in Ireland. One candidate calculation method is the CNOSSOS-EU method, which has been developed for noise mapping across Europe.

The CNOSSOS-EU method has become the mandatory method for the development of noise maps under the EU Environmental Noise Directive, and it is now appropriate to determine the suitability of this method in the assessment of noise from national road projects, not least so that Ireland can achieve future alignment with peer nations in the EU.

Considering these recent changes, the ANITA project was commissioned to develop one complete Standards Document, to replace Guidelines for the Treatment of Noise and Vibration in National Road Schemes (2004) and Good Practice Guidance for the Treatment of Noise during the Planning of National Road Schemes (2014).

The ANITA project is being conducted by a consortium including the University of Galway, UCD, AIT and RPS. It is funded by Transport Infrastructure Ireland.