External noise costs from transport - How are they estimated and how are they distributed within society?

Abstract

It is well recognised that noise may cause or contribute to a variety of negative impacts on human well-being and health. The calculation of external costs allows to quantify the economic relevancy of these different noise impacts and to summarize them to a single monetary unit. Typically, external cost calculations do not reflect the distribution of impacts among the members of a society. In contrast, the here presented methodology aims at quantifying external noise costs for different socio-demographic groups in order to examine whether certain groups may be affected by noise more than others. For this purpose, data from strategic noise maps are used to compute external costs per exposed person on the level of street sections. Then, noise costs are overlaid with differentiated information about the social composition of neighbourhoods, especially regarding the share of inhabitants with migration background as well as the share of inhabitants receiving social welfare. The results show that noise exposure differs significantly between socio-demographic groups. Inequalities may exist dependent on the place of residence and may be combined with other burdens. The analysis, which combines approaches from environmental justice research with the concept of external cost calculation, tries to raise political awareness of equity issues in urban- and transportation planning.