Boost in the fight against noise
The announcement marked the political return of Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region. In the midst of the controversy over the reduction to 50 km/h of the speed on the Paris ring road, the former presidential candidate announced that he wanted to make noise reduction one of his priorities. And it is putting the means into it: some 100 million euros will be released to reduce noise pollution by 30% by 2030. Among the measures envisaged, small vacuum pockets encapsulating sound, inserted into the road surface on the inner and outer belts.
A clear observation
An economic center, the Paris basin has long suffered from noise pollution. When in January 2022 radars measuring noise levels were installed on an experimental basis throughout France, four of the eight voluntary sites1 belonged to Paris and its surroundings. Two and a half years after the start of the tests, Fanny Mietlicki, the director of Bruitparif, the noise observatory in Île-de-France created twenty years ago, draws a positive assessment: “Our radars equipped with microphones and cameras recorded 15 to 20 times per day and per site episodes of crossing the threshold of 85 decibels, and we managed to identify the source of the noise: most of the time, it is the exhaust pipe of sometimes customized vehicles. »And two thirds of overtaking concerns motorized two-wheelers.
Several cities in Europe – Basel, Geneva, Barcelona, Berlin, etc. – have used Bruitparif’s expertise. “We are ahead of our European neighbors,” says the director of the observatory. The experimental system for anti-noise radars is awaiting approval and the first fines should be issued by spring 2025. Bruitparif is banking on generalization to the entire territory from 2026. A welcome boost when on average, a individual loses 9.4 months of healthy life due to noise2.
1) Paris, Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine), Villeneuve-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne), community of communes of the Chevreuse valley (Yvelines), Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), Bron (Rhône ), Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) and Toulouse (Haute-Garonne).
2) Bruitparif study.
