Parliament group "train noise" discussed opportunities of permanent monitoring of railway cargo traffic

Erwin Rüddel: "Transparency is a prerequisite for targeted noise abatement"
Berlin

At yesterday's meeting of the parliamentary group of railway noise in Berlin, numerous attending MEPs got an impression of the performance of the train monitoring and noise-measuring station developed by the company Innotec Systems GmbH.

They reaffirmed unanimously the paramount importance of permanent monitoring for effective and accurate combat against railway noise. "Transparency - ie the wheel accurate noise detection at freight wagons -is the crucial prerequisite for the willed by us and enshrined in the coalition agreement to halve the noise from freight transport by rail in Germany by 2020," said Erwin Rüddel, one of the three initiators the bipartisan parliamentary group “railway noise”, which have committed themselves to more than 120 members of the German Bundestag.
"With only 30 installations at 15 points, we can monitor 60 percent of rail traffic by investing a very low double-digit millions," added the MEP. The refinancing of this sum would be, in his words also possible without any problems through the sale of state data and whell accurate billing of noise-related track access charges. Rüddel expressed his incomprehension, that what will successfully practiced in trams for years, will not already being used in rail transport. Rüddel raises the question in the room: "Is the German Bahn AG actually so afraid of transparency that they continue to block the pioneering use of an existing technique for a reliable identification and sorting out of the worst noisemakers among the approximately 180,000 freight wagons in Germany?
Thus, the state company refused the technical progress, and to the detriment of the people concerned and their bad health, he added. In order to help the pioneering technology of monitoring the breakthrough, the parliamentary group therefore intends to meet with the association of private wagon owners again in the near future. The leadership of the VPI Association of Freight Wagons holder e.V. in Germany had the MPs been promised as early as May, 2020 all of its approx. 69,000 wagons to convert or renew. These wagons are available for half the mileage in the transport of the German freight transport on the railway. "Therefore," says Rüddel, "we are now initially recruit at the private car owners for the use of this technology."
The automatic data collection to monitor the track position, to wheel accurate noise detection and condition-based maintenance and fully automated monitoring and control of the wheel-rail contact under actual operating conditions is after Rüddels conviction "the royal road" for all further steps in the fight against train noise - not least for an even stronger, noise-related spread of track access charges. Moreover, the member of parliament reiterated the target to capture in all circumstances to the halving of railway noise to 2020th For this you have the full support of the Federal Minister of Transport Dobrindt. Rüddel also recalled the establishment of the coalition agreement, speed limits and be able to arrange night driving bans, if not by 2016 half of the freight cars were converted to quieter soles. "To this end there will be this year a bill that creates the appropriate legal basis for the federal government," Erwin Rüddel announced.

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