Carlos Reyes

Potential noise impacts associated with concert sound from a proposed football stadium.

A proposed new stadium for a national league football team was the subject of a recent Environmental Impact Report prepared for a major redevelopment of a former industrial site in San Francisco, CA. The development will include commercial and residential components, which would be adjacent to existing residential and industrial land. Consequently, potential noise impacts were evaluated for existing and future residential receptors. San Francisco recently revised its noise ordinance adopting relatively low limits for community noise, thus posing interesting challenges for new noise sources. The concept for the new outdoor stadium included a fixed sound system for football games that could result in noise impacts as well as those from crowd noise. This paper, however, will focus on the potential for community noise impacts from outdoor concerts that could be held in the stadium using the performer’s sound system as is typical in this situation. A three‐dimensional acoustical model, which included the local...

An evaluation of the accuracy of the Federal Transit Administration approved, groundborne noise and vibration prediction model for rail transit systems; a case study for a new subway line using post construction, transit operation measurements

The groundborne noise and vibration model developed by Nelson and Saurenman in 1984, now recognized by the Federal Transit Administration as the approved model for new transit system facilities, is entering its third decade of use by engineers and consultants in the transit industry. The accuracy of the model has been explored in the past (e.g., Carman and Wolfe). New data obtained for a recently completed extension to a major heavy rail transit system provides an opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of the model once more. During the engineering design phase of the project, noise and vibration predictions were performed for numerous buildings adjacent to the new subway line. The values predicted by the model were used to determine the need for and type of noise and/or vibration control measures. After the start of transit operations on the new line, noise and vibration measurements were made inside several of the buildings to determine whether the criteria were in fact achieved. The measurement results a...