<p><strong>URGENT - PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION NOW!</strong></p><p><strong>On 21 February 2017 Oxford City Council’s West Area Planning Committee will decide whether to remove the </strong>Planning Condition requiring Network Rail to deploy rail dampers along the newly-built railway though Oxford and Wolvercote. </p><p>Residents are calling on Oxford City Council to stand firm and prevent Network Rail from reneging on its commitment to deploy rail dampers along the newly-built track though Oxford and Wolvercote.</p><p><strong>Background</strong></p><p>Following a recent Government announcement, we now know that the newly re-built Oxford-Bicester railway line will soon become a major link, not only to London Marylebone, but also to the Midlands as part of the East West Rail project for passenger trains and day and night, fast, heavy freight trains. These will include stone supplies for HS2 and freight diverted from the Oxford to Birmingham mainline across to the West Coast mainline at Milton Keynes and Midland mainline at Bedford. Passenger and freight trains will pass day and night at approximately 5-minute intervals. Network Rail have applied to remove a Planning Condition for the line, requiring them to use rail dampening technology to reduce the exposure to noise from train movements for around 300 homes through Oxford and Wolvercote.</p><p>Expert evidence contradicts Network Rail’s claim that rail dampers would not reduce the train noise enough to make a perceivable difference, and therefore would not be cost-effective. The publicly available evidence<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>, indicates rail dampers are likely to reduce perceived noise by about 5dB: equivalent to a massive 2/3 reduction. It could be the difference between sleeping at night or being constantly woken by overnight freight trains, or enjoying a summer in the garden without having to halt a conversation while each train passes. The very high noise levels will be familiar to you if you have ever witnessed an express train or a fast heavy freight train passing you on a station platform.</p><p>Network Rail is putting Oxford City Council under pressure to remove the rail dampening condition in sensitive residential areas of Oxford and Wolvercote. It is a good thing to increase capacity on the railways and cut down the number of lorries on the roads, but this must not be done at the cost of sleep deprivation and stress for line-side residents.</p><p><strong>Petition organisers</strong></p><p>Lakeside, Muir & Jackie Gray; Blenheim Drive, Chris Irwin & Jeremy Thorowgood.</p><p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Evidence has been provided to Oxford City Council by Wolvercote resident Professor <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/C_Buckley"> Paul Buckley</a>, He cited evidence from several sources, including the following. (1) B.Hemsworth, <em>Noise reduction at source: EU Funded Projects</em>, European Workshop on <em>Railway noise in urban areas: Possible noise reduction measures</em>, Pisa, November 2006. (2) O.Bewes <em>Assessment of the benefit of rail dampers installed in Blackfriars Station</em>: a Technical Note for Arup, May 2014. (3) D.J.Thompson, C.J.C.Jones, T.P.Waters, D.Farrington <em>A tuned damper device for reducing noise from railway track</em>, Applied Acoustics <strong>68 </strong>(2007) 43-57. (4) M.Toward, G.Squicciarini, D.Thompson, <em>Damping down noise </em>Rail Professional, February 2014, pp 83-85.</p><p> </p>
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