Motorway sound barriers

ac1977 wrote: »

Are councils obliged to provide sound barriers on motoways that run alongside residential areas?
If so, is pestering the local politicians the best way to go about getting one built?
There is a stretch of the M8 running alongside quite a few housing estates in Glanmire, Cork, and the noise can be quite bad at certain times of the day.

L1011 wrote: »

Not as a matter of course however they can be put in as a planning requirement and often were. The Glanmire Bypass is so old its unlikely any such requirements existed.

However, after the fact, pestering your local TDs (and the councillors associated to them - not other ones, they can't do anything) is a good bet.

As marno21 mentions that is an old stretch of road so perhaps your estate came after the roadworks. In that case the planning requirement should have been on the developer to install them so you might have to follow the council on that basis assuming the estate has been taken in charge by the council at this stage.

No harm to follow both routes though, one might bite.

joujoujou wrote: »

Barriers are not for drivers, you aware of that?

I know, but you have to strike right balance. I don't know situation in the place about which previous posters asked but Poland is cautionary tale.

We introduced so strict noise rules and regulations that all the road schemes were in recent years lined with hundreds of km of barriers. Often in the middle of nowhere, only because some single farms quite farm from the roads.

These barriers, in such numbers, cost actually quite a lot of money and they will add to the cost of maintenance too. The varieties used in Poland are also extremely tacky and unsightly, blighting countryside with more artificial structures than needed.

It became so absurd that finally rules in Poland got relaxed to cut numbers of barriers.

I don't mind barriers in urban environment but lining miles of rural highways with, often ugly, barriers might backfire.
I really like Irish motorways rural feel with plants lining road than concrete or plastic walls.

Victor wrote: »

I wonder if there were any requirements in the planning permissions for the houses.

I wonder if the houses comply with part E of the building regs... for starters.

Geogregor wrote: »

Be careful what you wish for guys. You might end up like in Poland where they put particularly ugly sound barriers everywhere, even in the countryside to protect few houses far away from the road.

<snip>

One of the reasons why I like driving in Ireland is relatively few ugly sound barriers.

Drove in Poland for the first time last April, nice motorways, nice speed limit 140kph. I must admit I thought that these barriers were there to reduce wind on the motorway. The few place where they were no barriers (for 1 or 2 km)I noticed high cross winds.