Scottish Government

1 Introduction

1.1 Purpose of this Document

The purpose of this Transportation Noise Action Plan is to describe how the Scottish Government and its partners propose to deliver their obligations under the Environmental Noise Directive with respect to Transportation noise in Scotland outwith the agglomerations of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The Transportation Noise Action Plan is one of a set of six Noise Action Plans as follows.

• The Transportation Noise Action Plan
• The Edinburgh Agglomeration Noise Action Plan
• The Glasgow Agglomeration Noise Action Plan
• The Aberdeen Airport Noise Action Plan
• The Edinburgh Airport Noise Action Plan
• The Glasgow Airport Noise Action Plan

1.2 Requirement for Noise Action Planning

The European Parliament and Council Directive for Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise 2002/49/EC, more commonly referred to as the Environmental Noise Directive ( END), was published in the Official Journal of the European Union in July 2002. This Directive deals with noise from road, rail, and air traffic, and from agglomerations. It focuses on the impact of such noise on individuals, complementing existing EU legislation, which set standards for noise emissions from specific sources.

The three main objectives of the Directive are as follows:

• To determine the noise exposure of the population through noise mapping.
• To make information available on environmental noise to the public.
• To establish Action Plans, based on the mapping results, to reduce noise levels where necessary, and to preserve environmental noise quality where it is good.

To embrace their devolved responsibility to deliver the requirements of the END legislation the Scottish Executive published the Environmental Noise (Scotland) Regulations 2006

The Scottish legislation describes a two round process to manage environmental noise. The first round relates to major roads with more than six million vehicle passages per year, major railways with more than 60,000 train passages per year, major airports with more than 50,000 air traffic movements per year and transport sources and industry in agglomerations.

1.3 Current Status

The first round is now well underway and progress on the three main tasks required to fulfil the statutory obligations noted in Section 1.2 above is described in Table 1 below.

Tasks One and Two are now complete. This document and the related consultation process have been developed to complete Task Three.

When the SEA consultation on this draft transport Action Plan is complete and the final transport action plan adopted, the first round Action Planning Process will begin over the coming four year period (2009 to end 2012). At the end of the four year period, Noise Mapping and Action plans will be reviewed and revised as part of the second round process required by the Directive (end 2012 to 2016).

Table 1: Key Tasks in the Scottish Legislation - Round 1

1.4 Noise Action Planning

The strategic noise maps referred to in Task One, in Table 1 above, provided the starting point for Noise Action Planning. Their initial analysis, using the Prioritisation Matrix, described in Appendix 2 and Section 4.3 of this document, provided a focus for deriving actions to reduce noise where it is deemed there is a need to do so. Where the Prioritisation Matrix indicated a possible need to manage noise in an area, the area has been defined as a Candidate Noise Management Area ( CNMA), as described in Section 4.4 of this document. The CNMAs from this process are shown and listed in Appendix 3. A methodology has been developed to determine whether a CNMA should move on to Noise Management Area ( NMA) status, and this process is also described in Section 4.5 of this document. Finally, over the five year period of the Transportation Noise Action Plan, the NMAs will be determined and will also require further analysis, taking account of costs and benefits, to determine whether potential mitigation measures are appropriate.

It is recognised the key to successful delivery of the Transportation Noise Action Plan is the partnership and team working of the various organisations concerned. To support this delivery, separate Technical Guidance will be provided. The Technical Guidance will also assist the key organisations and their stakeholders in addressing the technical detail of the Noise Action Planning process.

1.5 Action Planning Process

The process of provision of information, consultation, and decision making on the issues of noise management is the wider Action Planning Process.

This document sets out the Transportation Noise Action Plan for those areas of Scotland outwith the agglomerations of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

However, it is important to note the Directive does not set limit values, nor does it prescribe the measures to be used in the Action Plans, which remain at the discretion of the relevant competent authority.

1.6 Layout of this Transportation Noise Action Plan

A description of, and background to, the European Directive on Environmental Noise, together with a brief outline of the Scottish Legislative framework in relation to environmental noise is provided in Sections 2.1 and 2.2 of this document. Section 2.3 provides an introduction to the strategic noise maps, and Section 2.5 describes the rationale behind the selection of areas and sources that have been mapped to date.

Section 3 explains the Action Plan requirements and describes the structure of the groups established to assist in the delivery of a Transportation Noise Action Plan for Scotland.

Section 4 covers the keys stages of the Action Planning Process, including the determination and further investigation of Candidate Noise Management Areas ( CNMA), and Noise Management Areas ( NMA).

Section 5 sets out the planning framework relevant to the Action Planning process, and describes the alignment of existing initiatives to be incorporated into the Action Planning process.

Finally Section 6 describes the Next Steps in the fulfilment of the aforementioned statutory requirements.