1 | Page International Conference on Climate Change Impact and Adaptation (I3CIA-2013) Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Research (3CSR), Department of Civil Engineering DUET - Gazipur, Bangladesh RAIL NOISE POLLUTION: ASSESSMENT AND PEOPLE’S PERSPECTIVE OF DHAKA CITY Plaban Das 1 , Masrur Mahedi 2 and A.B.M Badruzzaman 3 ABSTRACT: Dhaka is a city that stretches only a few miles in radius, but a city that can be described instantaneously as a city of traffic and crowd. This is a city of fifteen million people who live in every bend of the city's narrow roads, slums and streets. With this huge people heavy noise generates, in one word which is to be described, would be chaos. People of this city breathe, eat, smell and maybe, even adore the chaos that illustrates the scene of the mega capital today.Traffic congestion in roads has identified as the root cause of noise though in recent times railway noise has also become a matter of concern as the people are increasingly using railway. Cheap travel costs, less journey time, well scheduling, comfort etc. are the main reasons of growing use of railway. But, the railway noise has not been seen by g overnment and local outhorities or the people as a particular concern though this is a potential source of daily noise. Even no major approach has taken to address this growing concern of rail noise. This study has focused on train noise assessment and highlights a systematic procedure to evaluate the impact of rail noise of Dhaka city. Keywords: ambient noise, noise contour maps, noise pollution, people’s perspective. 1. Introduction Noise is unacceptable level of sound that creates annoyance, hampers mental and physical peace and may induce severe damage to the health. Along with the increasing degree of air and water pollution noise pollution is also emerging as a new threat to the human being. Exposure to the high level of noise may cause severe stress on the auditory and nervous system of human being, particularly the children and elderly people. The level of noise is very closely related with urbanization and motorization. Although there are many sources of noise pollution such as industries, construction works, indiscriminate use of loudspeaker, but among all motorized traffic is the principal source of noise in the highway and the railway. During the 70s and 80s noise pollution was not a concern for the people nearby the highway. But, as vehicles have been increased tremendously as population and people have to be more close to highways and railways. 1 Plaban Das, Research Assistant and Graduate student, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, plabancivil07@gmail.com 2 Masrur Mahedi, Graduate student, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, masrur.mahedi @gmail.com 3 Dr. A.B.M Badruzzaman, Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, borhan61@gmail.com