Effectiveness and External Noise of Transverse Rumble Strip Designs

The report presents a case study motivated by comments and concerns from residents regarding high levels of noise originating from vehicles passing transverse rumble strips at the intersection of US-41 northbound and West Park Avenue in Highland Park, Illinois. The Illinois Department of Transportation seeks to reduce the exterior noise the rumble strips generate without compromising the safety they deliver. A review of the latest literature on the topic and state of practice by other state departments of transportation revealed the absence of an existing standard that mandates specific designs and, thus, lack of consistency among the agencies on a configuration that could be followed. To decide whether changes to the existing design are appropriate, a performance comparison with other candidate designs needs to be conducted. To that end, measurements of exterior noise levels at the rumble strips on US-41 and at the adjacent neighborhood were collected in the presence of continuous flow of traffic. The collected measurements serve as a baseline for comparison with noise emanating from modified or new transverse rumble strip designs that would be investigated for possible implementation in the future. Similar measurements were conducted for interior noise in a vehicle passing over the rumble strips at different speeds to study their effectiveness in alerting drivers of cautions ahead.