Chemnitz City Council adopted the Noise Action Plan, Stage 4, at its meeting today. It contains concepts for measures to combat noise pollution from various types of noise sources analysed (such as road and rail traffic).
The Noise Action Plan Stage 4 includes technological noise reduction approaches such as the use of low-noise road surfaces, noise barriers and the purchase of low-noise vehicles in the municipal sector. With regard to local public transport, the continuation of the Chemnitz model and the light rail lines as well as the use of grass tracks are planned. In addition, the review of traffic law measures and the consideration of traffic aspects in all urban planning, public relations work and the maintenance and refurbishment of the transport infrastructure are particularly important.
The City of Chemnitz had updated the Noise Action Plan, Stage 4, for the urban area and prepared a draft for this purpose. This draft was made available to the public from mid-December 2024 to mid-January 2025 and could be downloaded via a link published in the official gazette (issue 49/2024) so that all interested citizens, associations and institutions could view it and submit comments. Suggestions, proposals or objections could be submitted until the end of January 2025. A total of 40 comments were submitted, including 32 from citizens. After evaluating and weighing up all the objections and suggestions received by the deadline, the noise action plan was finalised and has now been submitted to the city council for approval.
The Traffic and Civil Engineering Department of the City of Chemnitz is responsible for the implementation of most of the noise reduction measures in its capacity as the responsible body for the mapped municipal roads.
The proposed noise reduction measures identified by the experts were therefore evaluated by the Transport and Civil Engineering Office and checked to see whether they could be implemented in principle.
The draft of the Noise Action Plan Stage 4 was also agreed with the Public Order Office and the Urban Planning and Property Office.
The following public bodies were also involved: the Zschopau branch of the State Office for Roads and Transport, the eastern branch of Autobahn GmbH des Bundes, the AGENDA Advisory Board, the Saxon State Office for the Environment, Geology and Agriculture, the Federal Railway Authority and CVAG.
The Youth Welfare Office of the City of Chemnitz, Wohnungsgesellschaft Chemnitz Helbersdorf eG and the Chemnitz Mitte-West citizens' platform have also commented.
As part of the strategic noise mapping for stage 4, a corresponding analysis was carried out, which also forms the basis for the current noise action plan. For the planning of noise reduction measures, the areas with the highest noise pollution and the most affected residents were filtered out as noise hotspots.
The noise values from the strategic noise mapping and the number of people affected were used to calculate noise indicators. The respective noise index represents the level of noise pollution combined with the number of affected inhabitants.
In the Noise Action Plan Stage 4, noise hotspots are road sections that are continuously affected by noise of more than 55 dB(A) at night and have at least one area with a noise index of more than 130. A noise exposure of a day-evening-night level (LDEN) greater than or equal to 65 dB(A)* and a night-time level greater than or equal to 55 dB(A) is regarded as the health relevance threshold.
What has been mapped so far?
In the first stage, noise mapping of all main roads with more than six million vehicles per year was carried out for the city of Chemnitz in 2007 and a noise action plan was drawn up on this basis. The second stage of noise mapping provided for the mapping of main roads with more than three million vehicles per year with the additional aspect of categorising parts of the city of Chemnitz as a conurbation. As a result, roads with more than 3,000 vehicles per day were taken into account in the defined conurbation and rail traffic (trams) was also mapped throughout the city.
In the third stage of mapping, the results of stage 2 were reviewed and the study area was expanded to include additional municipal and district roads with a traffic volume of more than 3,000 vehicles per day. In the 4th stage of noise mapping, the procedure for roads and railway lines was analogous to the 3rd stage. However, the calculation for stage 4 was carried out according to the CNOSSOS-EU (Common Noise Assessment Methods for Europe) calculation method, which is now standardised for all EU countries. Stage 4 noise mapping for Chemnitz was carried out in 2022. Following the mapping, the public was involved in the strategic noise maps, the results of which were incorporated into the present draft.
Responsibilities
The City of Chemnitz is responsible for the noise mapping of road and rail traffic noise (trams). The Federal Railway Authority is responsible for noise mapping on railway lines. Noise action planning and the updating of the noise action plan confirmed by the city council with specific measures to reduce noise pollution is in turn the responsibility of the City of Chemnitz.
Explanation
The "Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise" established a standardised Europe-wide concept to preferably prevent, avoid or reduce the harmful effects of environmental noise. The EC Directive was transposed into national law with the Act on the Implementation of the EC Directive on the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise and the associated amendment to Sections 47 a-f of the Federal Immission Control Act and the Ordinance on Noise Mapping (34th BImSchV).
* LDEN (Day-Evening-Night level or day-evening-night level)