Comparison of Traffic Noise Attribute Factors and Noise Level Assessment Between Residential and Industrial Areas

The country's transport infrastructure is a key element of Malaysia's economic growth and achievement of its 2020 development goal. There will be a lot of expansion, including residential, industrial, and commercial businesses with high demand for transport, which might lead to more vehicles on the road, more traffic jams, and more noise pollution from traffic. Therefore, this study aims to compare the level of noise between residential and industrial areas as well as to analyse traffic noise attribute factors spatially and geographically, such as road geometry, traffic flow and climate conditions. The measurement was conducted at Shah Alam, the capital city of Selangor, Malaysia with each three sampling point locations in residential and industrial areas. The noise level was measured using a Sound Level Meter (SLM) with intervals of 3 hours from morning (8.00-11.00 a.m.), afternoon (12.00-3.00 p.m.) and evening (4.00-7.00 p.m.). The total sampling measurement was 36 for traffic noise. Other attribute factors of traffic noise were documented simultaneously, such as using a manual counter to measure the traffic volume, including buses, lorries, vans, motorcycles and cars. A tap meter was utilised to measure the width of the road for road geometry. However, climate conditions were obtained from secondary data (Google Weather Database). The result shows that the traffic noise level was above the standard regulation set by the Department of Environment, Malaysia, for Suburban and Urban Residential (Medium and Density) categories >65 dBA and Industrial areas > 75 dBA. Traffic noise attributes such as road geometry, traffic flow and climate conditions also contributed significantly to the high noise level. This work may have several implications for reference standards for measuring, calculating, and evaluating noise.