Highways move people and freight, but they also create steady noise for nearby homes, businesses, schools, parks, and public spaces. Tire noise, engine noise, braking, truck traffic, and pavement conditions can all raise sound levels along busy roadways.
Highway sound barrier walls help reduce that impact by blocking the direct path between traffic and nearby receivers. In many projects, absorptive noise barriers can also reduce reflected sound, which matters when homes, businesses, or other sensitive areas sit close to the road.
The simple solution for this problem is to use something to mitigate the noise. Here are four reasons to implement highway sound barriers.
To Protect Residential Areas
The average urban residential area experiences noise levels of roughly 40 decibels at night and 50 during the day. A similar neighborhood near a highway experiences 80 decibels or more, which causes a thrumming background noise. Anything above 80 decibels is potentially harmful to human ears.
While there is no way to eradicate highway sound pollution entirely, employing a sound barrier drastically reduces the amount of noise that carries. It builds a buffer that reduces noise pollution from spreading beyond the interstate into the surrounding community.
When state municipalities build roads near residential neighborhoods, they have a responsibility to install temporary construction noise barriers and permanent installations to counterbalance the new highway noise.
To Avoid Litigation
Noise pollution from interstates comes in several forms. There are truck, highway, and toll-road noises, as well as pavement noise. Each of them boosts the decibel level in the surrounding area, affecting more than 18 million people.
When these sounds propagate, the citizenry suffers health issues, such as sleep deprivation, nausea, and potential hearing loss. Any person who receives such injuries has the legal right to sue. Sound barriers function as a safeguard to avoid litigation.
After all, the cost of quality walls is $53 per square foot. That’s less than $4 million per mile. Contrast that frugal investment with the potential expense of a class action lawsuit, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to settle.
To Protect Local Businesses
Generally, commercially licensed regions are already in busier parts of a city. Manufacturers and retailers select their buildings based on their convenient road access. So, they already reside in the loudest places. Once the accompanying noise of interstates is added, commercial buildings face significant disadvantages in overcoming noise pollution.
The ramifications impact all the affected businesses. They can lose customers and revenue, which also means that the government will cede tax revenue from potential visitors and residents of the town. Having safeguards in place to reduce the aggravation of sound pollution increases the possibility of maximizing revenue for all commercial industries.
To Prevent Negative Publicity
In the social media era, word spreads immediately. If someone has a problem, they are literally seconds away from sharing it with everyone they know. Following the theory of Six Degrees of Separation, a person needs only a handful of social media shares to spread the word about an issue.
Consider that premise, focused on sound pollution. If a town experiences pollution issues, everyone will communicate the problem to others. As with the industry above, citizens and potential visitors will feel discouraged about traveling there. Adding a highway sound barrier becomes a proactive attempt to avoid negative publicity.
Everyone needs roads to connect to the rest of civilization. Given the accompanying noise, the obvious solution is to install sound barriers to protect citizens.
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