Noise annoyance related to the construction of road infrastructures: the preliminary results of a large socio-acoustical survey

The Turcot complex is a highway interchange located in the city of Montreal and is surrounded by several residential areas. In 2007, it was announced that the structures of the Turcot interchange would be replaced. To this end, the Ministry of the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change addresses environmental noise as one of the main nuisances. Environmental noise can affect health. It might be associated with annoyance, sleep disorders, cardiovascular problems and communication problems. So far, few studies have been conducted regarding noise annoyance to large infrastructure construction sites. This paper presents the preliminary results of a longitudinal study aimed at examining the annoyance related to road infrastructure construction noise. 1409 subjects participated in the study: 539 were included in a target group (less than 300 m from the Turcot infrastructures) and 870 in a control group (between 300 and 1000 m from the Turcot infrastructures). The participants responded to a telephone socio-acoustic survey, divided into six sections allowing to describe the respondents and their residence and to assess their sleeping habits, their evaluation of their living environment, their opinion of different sources of noise and their opinion on the noise of the construction work of the Turcot complex. The target group was significantly more annoyed (p<0.001), with 27% of the participants highly annoyed compared to only 11% in the control group. The target group showed significantly more annoyance related to the noise generated by the Turcot’s construction on all aspects of day-to-day life and on sleeping habits. They were also significantly more annoyed on other aspects of Turcot’s construction, such as odors, dust and vibrations. Our study suggests that for residents near the construction site, construction and traffic noise might be hard to distinguish as they hinder similar proportion of respondents.