EN    EN EN 
EN    EN  COMMISSION OF THE E UROPEAN COMMUNITIES 
Brussels, 8.7.2008 
SEC(2008) 2203 
  
COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT 
 
accompanying the 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM THE CO MMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL 
 
Rail noise abatement measures a ddressing the existing fleet 
 
Impact Assessment report  
 
{COM(2008) 432 final} 
{SEC(2008) 2204} 
EN 2   EN TABLE OF CONTENTS  
Glossary 
Acronyms Executive summary 1. Procedural issues and consulta tion of interested parties.............................................. 6 
2. Problem definition........................................................................................................ 9 3. Objectives.................................................................................................................. . 14 
4. Policy options............................................................................................................. 1 6 
4.1. Description of policy options..................................................................................... 16 4.2. Pre-selection and combin ation of policy options....................................................... 17 
4.3. Description of policy options selected  for the detailed impact assessment ............... 19 
5. Analysis of impacts.................................................................................................... 21 5.1. Basic assumptions for the impact assessment............................................................ 21 5.2. Impacts of the policy options on the retrofitting programme .................................... 22 
5.3. Identification of impacts ............................................................................................ 24 5.4. Economic impacts ...................................................................................................... 25 5.5. Environmental impacts............................................................................................... 33 5.6. Social impacts ............................................................................................................ 37 
5.7. Sensitivity analyses .................................................................................................... 40  
6. Comparing the options ............................................................................................... 43 7. Monitoring and evaluation ......................................................................................... 49  Annex I: Descripti on of policy options 
Annex II: Pre-selection and combination of policy options Annex III: Identification of impacts 
EN 3   EN GLOSSARY  
Term Explanation 
Decibel  For the measurement of noise, the lo garithmic decibel scale (dB) is 
used. An increase/ decrease of 10 dB  is generally perceived as "twice 
as loud" respectively "half as l oud”. A person with average hearing 
would just barely perceive a differe nce of 3 dB. If two separate sound 
sources are producing the same noise level then the overall noise level 
resulting from the addition of these two sources will be 3 dB higher, e.g.: 90 dB + 90 dB = 93 dB. Unfortuna tely, this has also an effect on 
noise reduction: A train composed  of 10 noise wagons emitting 90 dB 
and 10 silent wagons emitting 80 dB has an average noise emission of 
87.4 dB, just below the threshold of  perception of the noise reduction.
 
K-block Brake block made of composite ma terials with different braking 
characteristics than traditional cas t-iron brake blocks. If used for 
retrofitting existing wagons, a major adaptation of the braking system 
is required. 
LL-block Brake block made of composite materials with same braking 
characteristics as traditional cast-iron brake blocks. If used for 
retrofitting existing wagons, no major adaptation of the braking system 
is required. 
Railway undertaking (RU) Any public or private undertaking, th e activity of which is to provide 
transport of goods and/or passengers by rail 
Infrastructure manager (IM) Any body or undertaking that is re sponsible in particular for 
establishing and maintaining railway infrastructure 
Wagon owner (WO) Any body or undertaking other than a railway undertaking that is 
technically or financiall y responsible for wagons  
Net Present Value 
(NPV) Standard method for the financial appr aisal of long-term projects. Each 
cash inflow/outflow is discounted back to its value on a given date. 
 
EN 4   EN ACRONYMS  
Acronym Description 
CO 2 Carbon dioxide 
dB Decibel (unit for noise measurements, see glossary) 
DEV Combined Option: differentiated track  access charges + noise emission ceiling + 
voluntary commitment 
DEV-79 Combined DEV option, wagons enteri ng service from 1979 eligible for retrofitting 
DEV-84 Combined DEV option, wagons enteri ng service from 1984 eligible for retrofitting 
EU European Union 
FTE Full Time Equivalent person 
IM Infrastructure Manager 
Lden Day-evening-night noise indicator 
MS Member State 
NO x Nitrogen oxides 
NPV Net Present Value 
PM 10 Particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometres 
RU Railway Undertaking 
SOV Combined Option: subsidies for retrofitting + operating restrictions for noisy wagons + 
voluntary commitment 
SOV-79 Combined SOV option, wagons entering service from 1979 eligible for retrofitting 
SOV-84 Combined SOV option, wagons entering service from 1984 eligible for retrofitting 
tkm Tons x kilometre 
tr·km Trains x kilometre 
TSI Technical Specifications for Interoperability 
UIC Union internationale des chemins de fer (International Union of Railways)  
WO Private Wagon Owner 
 
EN 5   EN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY  
This impact assessment prepares a Communicat ion of the European Commission on rail noise 
abatement measures addressing the existing fl eet. The aim of this policy is to promote 
retrofitting of freight wagons w ith low-noise brake blocks by providing financial incentives 
and/ or setting up legal requirements. Retrofitti ng has been identified by several studies as 
well as by an expert group advising the Commissi on as the most effective and cost-effective 
measure to reduce rolling noise emissions of freight wagons. 
In the course of the analysis it has been conclu ded that combinations of policy instruments are 
more suitable and effective than single meas ures. Two combinations of policy options have 
been assessed in detail regarding their ec onomic, environmental and social impacts and 
compared to the 'no policy change' option : 
(1) "SOV": Subsidies for retrofitting, Operating restrictions for noisy wagons and 
Voluntary commitment; 
(2) "DEV": Differentiated track access charges (f inancial incentives for silent 
wagons), Emission ceiling for railway lines and Voluntary commitment. 
Both policy options (DEV and SOV) demons trate their effectiveness in achieving the 
objective of noise reduction. The noise emissions of  freight trains could be reduced by almost 
50% until 2013/2014 if a new type of low-noise brake blocks woul d be used that is yet not 
fully available on the market (so-called LL-blocks). 
For all policy options and scenarios assessed, significant additional costs for retrofitting and 
maintenance can be expected in the range of 550 million € to 2.25 billion €. However, the 
results of the cost-benefit analysis show for all policy options considerable net benefits in the range of 2.72 to 9.46 billon €. 
Due to lower costs and higher benefits, the use of LL-blocks which do not require the 
adaptation of the braking system always leads to  significantly higher net benefits than the use 
of so-called K-blocks (the lo w-noise technology used today to  equip new wagons) even if it 
has been assumed that LL-blocks would only be fully available as from 2011.  
As overall result of this impact assessm ent, policy option DEV consisting of noise-
differentiated track access charge s with a bonus for silent wagons, noise emission ceiling and 
voluntary commitments has been identified as th e most appropriate solution to achieve the 
objectives.. The main advantages of this option are the highest benefits in terms of reduction 
of number of citizens a ffected by rail noise (with a benefits -costs ratio of up to 10), lower 
costs than the SOV option, the direct link of this  initiative to the policy objectives (to reduce 
noise by using silent wagons) an d its easy application to wa gons registered in different 
Member States or even outside the EU. As th is policy option also has certain implementation 
requirements, solutions need to be elaborated  for a harmonisation of differentiated track 
access charges at European level and for passing the noise bonuses to the wagon owners/ keepers bearing the co sts of retrofitting.  
Moreover high priority needs to be given to the further development and homologation of LL-
blocks as the most economic viable technology for retrofitting. By implementing policy option DEV providing incentives to further re duce costs of retrofitting and following the 
positive examples of the United Kingdom and Port ugal of cost-neutral retrofitting, it should 
be possible to reduce the additional co sts of retrofitting to a minimum. 
EN 6   EN 1. P ROCEDURAL ISSUES AND CONSULTATION OF INTERESTED PARTIES  
The Communication on rail noise abatement meas ures addressing the ex isting fleet has been 
part of DG TREN’s work Progr amme 2007 as initiative nr. 41. 
The impact assessment report has been drafted by DG TREN's Unit for rail transport and 
interoperability. The impact assessment process was steere d by an Inter-Service Steering 
Group chaired by DG TREN and with members from SG, ENV, JRC, SANCO and ENTR. 
Furthermore, experts of the Economic Evalua tion Unit of the European Railway Agency 
provided valuable input and advice for the impact assessment study. 
Public consultation 
In the course of the preparation of a Communi cation on rail noise wh ich addresses abatement 
measures for the existing fleet, the Comm ission presented in its Consultation Paper1 issued in 
May 2007 several policy options to the industry, in particular the ra ilway undertakings, to 
other actors concerned (such as wagon keepers, infrastructure managers, freight shippers and 
forwarders), to associations representing the rail sector and others concerned (local and 
regional authorities, and NGOs) as well as to the Member States of the European Union. 
Interested parties have been requested to give  their opinions on the solutions presented in the 
Consultation Paper, in particular via the questions it sets. For this purpose, an online 
questionnaire has been made av ailable during a consultation period of 8 weeks from 4 June 
until 31 July 2007. The Commission services also convened the interested parties on 23 May 
2007 to get feedback. The presentations given at  the workshop as well as a summary of the 
results of the consultation are available on DG TREN's website:  
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/rai l/environment/noise_en.htm 
Therefore, it can be concluded that the Commi ssion’s minimum standards have all been met. 
In the following, the results of the publ ic consultation are summarised. A more 
comprehensive description of the results has been published on DG TREN's website2.  
During the consultation period 73 replies have b een registered including written contributions. 
60% of the replies have been provided by or ganisations/ companies and 40% by citizens. 
Among the organisations various ty pes were represented such as  associations, public sector 
bodies, private companies, governments at  different levels and consultancy. 
The vast majority of participants in the cons ultation process agreed on the approach of the 
Consultation Paper to focus on retrofitting of freight wagons and to provide the necessary political and legal framework. Furthermore, due  to the expected growth of rail freight 
transport, short-term action would be urgently  required in some European regions, mainly 
along the main rail freight corridors, where rail  noise exposure is very high. In general, a 
preference for measures or at least harm onisation at European level was given.  
The consultation confirmed in principle the initially proposed targets of the Consultation 
Paper. However, following the majority of the contributors the minimum remaining lifetime 
                                                
 
1 Consultation document of the Commission's services : Rail noise abatement measures addressing the 
existing fleet. May 2007.  
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/rail/ consultation/2007_rail_noise/doc/ra il_noise_consultation_document_en.pdf  
2 Public consultation on "Rail noise abatement measur es addressing the existi ng fleet" - Summary of the 
contributions received.  
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/rail/ consultation/2007_rail_noise/doc/ra il_noise_consultation_summary_071017.pdf  
EN 7   EN at the end of the retrofitting programme has been reduced to 5 years to ensure a significant 
noise reduction in mid-term. Furthermore, the targ et will be quantified as 97% of the axle-km 
performed by silent wagons (equivalent to retr ofitting wagons with more than 10,000 km/a) as 
this definition is closer to the noise reduction objective. 
Concerning the deadline for the co mpletion of the retrofitting exercise, the majority of the 
participants preferred the comp letion of the retrofitting exercise before or by 2014. However, 
according to information received from various st akeholders, this is technically not feasible 
(lack of capacity of maintena nce workshops and suppliers) or  would lead to significant 
additional costs as the wagons could not be retrofitted w ithin the normal maintenance 
intervals of about 6 to 8 years. Therefore, 2017 as the initially proposed  target date can be 
regarded as well balanced between the need for immediate action to reduce rail noise and the feasibility/ the economic situa tion of the sector. As proposed  by one contributor the noise 
mapping exercise in the framework of Directive 2002/49/EC
3 should be used to assess the 
success of the retrofitting programmes: Against the 2007 maps as baseline, first improvements 
should be visible by 2012 and for the 2017 exercise ; a substantial reduction of rail noise is the 
objective of this initiative. 
The proposed assessment criteria for the polic y options have received a positive opinion of 
the majority of the participants. However,  two changes have been made following the 
consultation results: 
• A new assessment criterion "Effectiveness for hot spots" will cover the effectiveness 
regarding the noise reduction for the population affected and if a policy option allows 
differentiating regarding locat ion and time of day/night.  
• To clarify that potential negative impacts on railways' modal share are covered by "Impact 
on transport policy", this criterion will be re named as "Impact on competitiveness of rail 
freight". 
With one exception the policy options propo sed by the Consultation Paper have been 
confirmed and will be further evaluated with in the impact assessment. Tradable noise 
emission permits were refused by a majority of th e contributors and have been excluded from 
the assessment.  
It has been widely accepted that an integr ated approach would be  required as no single 
measure seems to be able to solve the problems . There was no clear i ndication about generally 
favoured policy options. Direct s ubsidies and differentiated track access charges have been in 
the focus of the discussion on the workshop, but also the use of legal instruments received a wide support of about 80% of the cont ributors to the on line consultation.  
The consultation identified a clear need for complementary measures, mainly research and 
demonstration projects for LL-blocks, the deve lopment of a harmonised classification system 
for wagons and their noise emission and of auto matic wagon identificati on systems as well as 
studies on life cycle costs of retrofitting. These aspects are de alt with by the Communication. 
                                                
 
3 Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2002 relating to the 
assessment and management of environmental noise. OJ L 189, 18.7.2002, p. 12-25. 
EN 8   EN Use of external expertise 
After the decision has been take n to carry out an impact assessment for this initiative, a 
request for services including the terms of reference of the study has been submitted to 
PriceWaterhouseCoopersAdvisory in  the context of the Multiple  Framework Contract for ex-
ante Evaluation and Impact Assessment (reference TREN/A1/ 46-2005) on 29 March 2007. 
The results of this study (hereafter called "PWC study") serve as basis for the impact 
assessment. 
After the signature of the cont act on 7 July 2007 the kick-off meeting has been held on 12 
July 2007. The interim report has been delivered on 10 September 2007 followed by the final report on 10 December 2007
4. 
Recommendations of the Impact Assessment Board 
Following the hearing on 20 February the Imp act Assessment Board provided its opinion on 
22 February 2008 with 4 main recommendati ons for improvement or clarification: 
• The requested summary overview of who bear s which costs has been integrated into 
section 6. 
• Possible implementation problems associated w ith the preferred option have been further 
elaborated in section 5.7 addre ssing in particular the transfer of noise  bonuses to the wagon 
owners bearing the retrofitting costs as well as interim actions. 
• The explanation of the pre-selection and comb ination of policy options in section 4.2 has 
been more detailed by making better use of the assessment described in Annex II. 
• The need for action at European level has be en further explained in section 2 by better 
describing potential disadvantages of national measures. 
In addition technical comments ma de prior to the hearing and in  the course of the meeting 
have been considered for the final vers ion of this impact assessment report. 
                                                 
4 PriceWaterhouseCoopersAdvisory: Impact Assessment study on rail noise abatement measures 
addressing the existing fleet. Fi nal report December 2007.  
http://ec.europa.eu/transpor t/rail/studies/index_en.htm 
EN 9   EN 2. P ROBLEM DEFINITION  
Problem of railway noise 
Noise is one of the most widespread public health threats in in dustrialized countries. 
Therefore, the abatement of noise is necessary not only for comfort but also because of other 
important health effects such as cardiova scular problems and cognitive impairment. 
Rail transport is generally considered one of  the most environmenta lly friendly transport 
modes. However, the contribution of rail transpor t to noise pollution is significant, though still 
lower than that of road transport or aviati on. According to European Environment Agency 
figures for 20005, about 10% of the population in the EU -15 was exposed to significant noise 
from rail transport (as compared with a figur e of 30% for road transport and 10% for air 
transport). This seems to be a relatively low fi gure, but when compared to the modal share of 
rail and road freight trans port (17% for rail and 73% for road of land transport6), the specific 
contribution of rail is significant. More precis e figures are an expected outcome of the 2007 
noise mapping exercise according to Directive 2002/49/EC. The deadline for the submission 
of the first sets of strategic noise maps for major railways a nd large agglomerations was 30 
December 2007. 
In some European regions (e.g. parts of the Netherlands and the Rhine valley), there is 
substantial public opposition to rail noise dema nding political initiative s to reduce it. If no 
remedial action is taken, this could lead to re strictions in rail frei ght traffic along the most 
important European rail corridor s. Such bottlenecks would be lik ely to have adverse effects 
on European economies. Furthermore, a possibl e modal shift from rail to road on these 
corridors would lead to increasing environm ental impacts, in par ticular greenhouse gas 
emissions as the specific CO 2-emissions of rail freight are significant lower than those of road 
haulage. 
Freight wagons and their braking technology as most important so urce of rail noise 
According to the Position Paper on the European  strategies and priorities for railway noise 
abatement drafted in 2003 by the Working Group Railway Noise of the European 
Commission consisting of experts from Member Stat es and the rail sector7, rolling noise of 
freight trains has been identified as the mo st important source of rail noise. The braking 
technology used nowadays (cast iron brake blocks  braking on the wheels’ surface) leads to 
rough wheel surfaces and subsequently to a high level of vibration of rails and wheels. As 
freight trains often operate at night, th eir noise emission is even more critical. 
Therefore, the Communication and the impact assessment are focussing on this particular 
problem. However, as a following step, other m easures such as requirements for the track 
quality or measures addressing other sources of rail noise (hi gh speed trains or noise from 
train horns) will be necessary to further reduce rail noise. 
                                                 
5 European Environment Agency: TER M 2001. Indicators tracking transport and environment integration 
in the European Union. Copenhagen, 2001. 
6 Of inland modes; DG TREN: Statistical pocketbook 2006,  
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/figures/pocketbook/2006_en.htm 
7 Working Group Railway Noise of the European Commission: Position Paper on the European strategies 
and priorities for railway noise abatement, Brussels 2003,  
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/ra il/ws/doc/position-paper.pdf. 
EN 10   EN Noise barriers as an expensive measure 
In response to rail noise probl ems, infrastructure-related rail noise abatement measures such 
as noise barriers are introduced  at national level. Noise re duction of about 10 dB can be 
achieved. However, the EU-funded research proj ect STAIRRS identified that noise barriers 
have very low efficiency due to  the investment costs in the or der of magnitude of 100 billion 
Euros if only 5% of the lines ide population should have remaining noise above an L den of 
60 dB(A))8. 
Therefore, the Working Group Railway Noise r ecommended giving priority to measures at 
the source (vehicles and tracks) as they generally are more cost-effective. This would allow achieving a more sustainable situation of sm ooth running surfaces on the wheels and the rails 
("smooth wheels on smooth tracks"). A recent meta-study
9 considering several studies at 
European and national level confirmed this st rategy by demonstrating that measures at the 
source, e.g. the use of low-noise  brake blocks to ensure the smoothness of the wheel surfaces, 
are significantly more cost-eff ective than noise barriers.  
According to UIC figures10, a total of 150 - 200 million € is spent annually in Europe on these 
programmes with cumulative expenditure as of end 2005 of over 600 m illion €. Considering 
the current practice and the pressing require ments to draw up action plans according to 
Directive 2002/49/EC aimed at reducing exposure to railway noise, there is a risk that non-
cost-effective noise abatement measures will be implemented for most major railway lines, 
costing some billions of euros. 
Certainly, noise barriers could be an effective element of noise abatement programmes where 
necessary. If measures at the source complement the barriers, the length  and/ or height of 
barriers can be reduced leading to significant cost savings. 
Measures at source taken are not sufficient 
In December 2005, the Commission adopted techni cal specifications for interoperability 
relating to the subsystem "rolling stock — noise " (Noise TSI). This Decision introduced the 
first noise limits for rolling stock used in th e European Union. These limits apply to new and 
renewed rolling stock including freight wagons . New freight wagons have to be equipped 
with low-noise brake blocks reduc ing the noise emission by about 50%. 
However, the introduction of this low-noise tech nology will take several years due to the long 
lifetime of rolling stock (see Figure 1). Without additional measures, not before 2020 half of 
the freight wagon fleet will be more silent. 
                                                 
8 Working Group Railway Noise of the European Commission: Position Paper on the European strategies 
and priorities for railway noise abatement, Brussels 2003 
9 Oertli; Schwarzenbach: Cost-effec tiveness analyses in railway noi se. In: Conference Proceedings 
"International Workshop Railway noise in  urban areas". Pisa, November 2006. 
10 UIC: Noise Reduction in European Railway Infrastructure. Status Report 2007.  
http://www.uic.asso.fr/download.php/environnement/reductionbruitinfra_en.pdf 
EN 11   EN 0100.000200.000300.000400.000500.000600.000700.000800.000
2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031total fleet - w<1979
total fleet - w<1984
Low Noise
"retrofitted"
total fleet
end of time frameFLEET
 
Figure 1 : Predicted evolution of the freight wa gon fleet (EU-27 countries with 1435 mm 
standard gauge)   
The effective reduction of the noise emissions will be even slower due to the logarithmic 
nature of noise perception11. Half of the expected averag e reduction of 8 dB following the 
renewal of the fleet with low-noise wagons will only be achieved  by 2025 (see Figure 2). 
Therefore, additional measures are required addressing the existing fleet. Retrofitting these wagons with low-noise braking technology woul d speed up the noise reduction significantly. 
012345678910
2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031dB
012345678910
Mpersonsemitted sound level reduction [dB]
Reduction of Affected population >55dB [Mpers]
REDUCTION OF NOISE
AND AFFECTED POPULATION
 
Figure 2: Predicted average reduction of  emitted noise and affected population   
                                                 
11 For the measurement of noise, the logarithmic decibel scale (dB) is  used. An increase/ decrease of 
10 dB is generally perceived as "twice as loud" re spectively "half as loud”. Further expiations are 
provided in the glossary.  
EN 12   EN Low-noise technology needs further development 
The technology is now available to reduce rail nois e significantly at its source. Several types 
of low-noise brake blocks have  been developed by industry, tested and homologated by UIC 
(K-blocks in 2003) or provision ally homologated (LL-blocks in 2005). K-blocks are very 
effective in noise abatement (reduction of up to 10 dB) and are in general regarded as about cost neutral for new vehicles. However, as they  demonstrate different braking characteristics 
compared to the conventional cast iron blocks, re trofitting requires adjustments in the braking 
system, leading to additional initial costs in the range of EUR 3000 to 12000.  
LL-blocks are currently developed to be bette r suited to retrofitting because they do not 
require such adjustments. However, due to technical problems or missing practical experience they have not yet received the definitive homologation and most of the currently available types of LL-blocks consist of sinter metal, an  expensive material leading to high costs per 
brake block. Currently, LL-blocks are expected to lead to an increase of maintenance costs. 
Obstacles for retrofitting 
The main obstacles to retrofitting freight wa gons on a large scale are financial. Even if 
retrofitting is widely agreed to be the most cost-effective way of sign ificantly reducing rail 
noise, stakeholders do not have suffici ent resources or incentives to do it: 
• Railway undertakings (RUs) and wagon owners/ keepers could simply decide to launch a 
retrofitting programme for th eir own wagons. However, th ey do not have sufficient 
incentives to do so as they have to bear additional costs (retrofitting and the risk of increased maintenance costs) and there are no  economic short-term benefits. Furthermore, 
the rail sector is under high competitive pressure from other transport modes. Certainly, retrofitting would be an inve stment in the availability of network capacity (which 
otherwise might be reduced in the near future  due to restrictions on noisy freight wagons) 
and the stability of track access charges, but  the additional costs of retrofitting do impede 
any voluntary action. 
• The infrastructure managers (IMs) are not responsible for the rolling stock. Moreover, the 
eventual savings in infrastructure maintena nce costs due to less rail wear following the 
introduction of wagons with smooth wheels ha ve not yet been determined and Member 
States are financing existi ng infrastructure-related noise abatement programmes. 
• Member States could save money from retrofit ting freight wagons, as costly infrastructure-
related noise abatement programmes could be  reduced. However, they have no direct 
influence over the RUs' decisi on on retrofitting freight wagons. 
• Citizens living close to railway lines are affected by rail noise . They do not have any direct 
influence on decisions concerning noise abatem ent either at the source or by implementing 
infrastructure related-programmes.  
To summarise, retrofitting freight wagons to redu ce the need to build no ise barriers would be 
the most efficient solution for all stakeholders . The lack of direct influence on the decision on 
retrofitting programmes (IMs, Memb er States) and/or the lack of short-term benefits and 
funds (RUs and wagon owners) are major obstacl es to implementing the most cost-effective 
measures to reduce rail noise.  
This can be regarded as a market failure and therefore, public intervention is required to 
overcome these obstacles by identifying and pr omoting the most effective and efficient 
measures to implement retrofitting at European level. 
EN 13   EN The EU's right to act 
Article 174 of the Treaty establishing the Eu ropean Community provides that Community 
policy on the environment shall contribute to protecting human health and to preserving, 
protecting and improving the quality  of the environment. Moreover,  Articles 6 and 152 of the 
EC Treaty links health and environmental prot ection to transport policy by stipulating their 
integration into all Community policies and activities. 
Furthermore, Article 156 of the EC Treaty in accordance with Article  155 (1) gives the EU 
the power to take measures in the transport s ector to ensure the interoperability of the 
networks. Based on Article 156 of the EC Treaty and Articles 6 (1) and 23 (1) of the Interoperability Directive for conventional rail
12, the TSI Noise has been adopted by the 
Commission introducing limit values fo r new and renewed rolling stock. 
The issue of retrofittin g the existing freight wa gon fleet has been iden tified in section 7.4 of 
the Noise TSI, which states: "Given the long life-cycle of rail way vehicles it is also necessary 
to take measures on the existing fleet of rollin g stock, with priority for freight wagons, to 
foster a noticeable redu ction of the perceived noise level within a reasonable time period. The 
Commission will take initiatives to discuss options  for retrofitting of freight wagons with the 
relevant stakeholders to achieve a general agreement with the industry."  
Today, about 50% of rail freight transport is international. For that reason, a large number of 
wagons run across national networks. As a small number of noisy vehicles can determine the 
noise impact, national abatement strategies cannot solve the problem sufficiently. Furthermore, national approaches  could negatively impact on cr oss border corridors and give 
a competitive advantage to some players agai nst others. In addition, by Community law and 
its harmonised implementation different national approaches can be avoided. 
Therefore, it can be concluded that in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out 
in Article 5 of the EC Treaty, the objective of reducing the nu mber of people affected by rail 
noise significantly will be be tter reached by complementing the action already taken by the 
Member States by a Community action on rail noise abatement. 
However, not all of the answers can be given at EU level. The Impact Assessment points out 
that various policy actions at EU and national level as well as actions taken by stakeholders 
are necessary; each have their role to play in realising the potential.  It is essential that all these 
actors are actively involved. 
                                                
 
12 Directive 2001/16/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 19 March 2001 on the 
interoperability of the conventional rail system. OJ L 110 of 20.04.2001; page 1. 
EN 14   EN 3. O BJECTIVES  
General objectives 
EU transport policy, as recently reaf firmed in the 2006 Mid-term Review13 of the White Paper 
of 200114, calls for effective and efficient transport systems offering high quality services, 
environmental protection, innovation and intern ational connections. The development of a 
European Community rail area would meet these objectives in a sustainable manner, as it would ensure high energy efficiency and a low level of pollutants' emissions. However, the impact of rail noise might result in restrictions  to rail freight traffic along the most important 
European rail corridors. 
The environmental policy of the European Union “aims at a high level of protection” in 
particular regarding human health
15. Article 7(1) of the Si xth Environmental Action 
Programme16 sets the target of “substantially reduci ng the number of people regularly affected 
by long-term average levels of noise, in particul ar from traffic which, according to scientific 
studies, causes detrimental effects on human h ealth”. The renewed Sustainable Development 
Strategy adopted in 2006 by the Council sets out overall object ives, targets and concrete 
actions for seven key priority challenges for th e period to 2010, one of  which is sustainable 
transport. One of the operational targets set for this key priority is 'reducing transport noise 
both at source and through mitigation measures to  ensure overall exposure levels minimise 
impacts on health '. 
In this context and in accordance with Directive 2002/49/EC, the European Commission 
develops and completes the existing set of Community measures concerning noise emitted by the major sources, in particular road and rail ve hicles and infrastructure,  aircraft, outdoor and 
industrial equipment and mobile machinery, and for developing additional measures, in the 
short, medium and long term. 
In line with these policies, the overall targ et for rail noise abatement programmes addressing 
the existing fleet should therefor e be to reduce the number of pe ople regularly affected by rail 
noise, by means of abatement measures with th e highest cost-effectiveness ratio and health 
benefits. Given that the lack of  appropriate mitigating measures may be a serious threat to the 
development of rail traffic, the European Co mmission will prepare a Communication on rail 
noise which covers abatement measures for the existing fleet. 
                                                
 
13 COM (2006) 314 of 22.06.2006: "Keep Europe moving – Sustainable mobility for our continent – Mid-
term review of the European Commission’s 2001 Transport White Paper". 
14 COM (2001) 370 of 12.09.2001: “European transport policy for 2010: Time to decide”. 
15 See the Consolidated Version of the Treaty Establishing the European Community, Article 174: 
"Community policy on the environment shall aim at a high level of protection […] It shall be based on 
the precautionary principle […] environmental damage should as a priority be  rectified at source and 
[…] the polluter should pay." 
16 Decision 1600/2002/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 July 2002 laying down the 
Sixth Community Environment Action Programme, OJ L 242, 10.9.2002, p. 1. 
EN 15   EN Specific objectives 
The retrofitting exercise should in principle include all European freight wagons with an 
annual mileage of more than 10 000 km and an  expected remaining lif etime of at least 5 
years. Wagons with a mileage of less than 10 000  km per year account for less than 3% of the 
overall transport performance of the freight fleet. Therefore, these restricti ons could reduce 
the cost of retrofitting signi ficantly without jeopardising th e objective of noise reduction. 
As additional indicator the number of axle-km run by low-noise wagons will be used, as this 
is more closely related to noise reduction than  an indicator related to  the number of wagons. 
The target is set as 97% of the overall European amount of axle-km (excluding wagons with low annual mileages of up to 10 000)), e quivalent to the wagon-related target. 
To maximise noise reduction at an early stage,  priority should be given to retrofitting wagons 
with a high yearly mileage. 
The proposed target date for completing the re trofitting exercise would be 2017. This assumes 
that retrofitting starts in 2009/2010 (one or tw o years after the intended adoption of the 
Communication) and that the normal maintenance cycle for freight wagons applies (about 6 to 
8 years). Including retrofitting as part of the normal overhaul of wagons would avoid the additional cost of withdraw ing wagons from service and moving them to maintenance 
workshops. 
Furthermore, as an important milestone, agai nst the 2007 noise maps (a ccording to Directive 
2002/49/EC) as baseline, first improvements should be visible by 2012. For the 2017 mapping 
exercise a substantial reduction of noise emission of freight wa gons is the objective of this 
initiative. 
EN 16   EN 4. P OLICY OPTIONS  
4.1. Description of policy options 
Possible policy options and instruments to suppor t/ promote retrofitting of the European rail 
freight fleet are listed below a nd briefly described. Beside, a 'doing nothing/ no policy change' 
option will be used as baseline scenario (p olicy option A). Annex I provides more detailed 
descriptions of the policy options. 
The combination of different instruments is ex amined, as the problem is rather complex and 
rail freight and rail noise conditions vary greatly across the EU. 
Policy option B consists of ac tions paving the way towards a voluntary commitment  by the 
various stakeholders – railway  undertakings, wagon owners and infrastructure managers. A 
voluntary commitment could include such components as commitments to individual 
objectives (e.g. individual retrofitting targets), to  set up and implement appropriate retrofitting 
programmes to define priorities  in order to get the best re sults and/ or to financial 
contributions from the sector. 
To overcome the financing problem, which is th e main obstacle to retrofitting, wagon owners 
could be given financial incentives (policy opti on C). In this context, it is important to 
underline that subsidies granted by Member Stat es to economic actors s hould be regarded as 
state aids according to Article  87 of the EC Treaty. The EC Tr eaty generally prohibits state 
aid which affects competition between markets actors, unless it is ju stified by reasons of 
general economic development. The European Commission is in charge of watching over 
compliance of state aid with EU competition ru les. For this purpose, the Commission services 
are preparing state aid guidelines for the rail sector. A draft of the guidelines17 has been made 
available in December 2007 for consultation w ith the Member States and stakeholder. 
Following instruments to provide financial incen tives have been examined in this impact 
assessment: 
• Differentiated track access charges (C1) : This instrument addresses the existing financial 
flow between railway undertakings and infrastructure managers: the track access charge. 
The railway undertakings would receive a discount on this charge if using low-noise 
rolling stock. Based on Directive 2001/14/EC18 harmonising charging principles two basic 
models of differentiated track access charges coul d be used as an incentive: a cost-neutral 
bonus-malus system or a bonus system where th e infrastructure manager receives financial 
compensation from the Member State. 
• Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2) : Another instrument for granting 
financial incentives to railway undertakings to use low-noise freight wagons is subsidies 
from Member States directly to the rail way undertakings. The subsidy scheme could 
contain components similar to a discount on track access charges.  
• Subsidies for retrofitting (C3) : This instrument consists of introducing noise abatement 
programmes with direct public financial support. The cost of retrofitting would be partly or 
                                                 
17 Preliminary draft Community guidelines on State aid for railway undertakings.  
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/state_aid/consultation_ms_en.htm 
18 Directive 2001/14/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2001 on the 
allocation of railway infrastructure capacity and the levying of charges for the use of railway 
infrastructure and safety certification, OJ L 75, 15.03.2001, p. 29. 
EN 17   EN fully reimbursed. Subsidies for retrofitting could be granted by Me mber States or at 
European level. 
• Loans at preferential terms (C4) could be granted to wagon owners to promote 
retrofitting, in particular to support the initial outlay.  
• Tax incentives (C5) provide financial incentives by granti ng tax allowances for operators 
applying more environmentally friendly solutio ns. To support retrofitting, composite brake 
blocks could be excluded from VAT. 
Beside economic incentives, legal instruments (policy option D)  could be used to impose 
retrofitting of freight wagons. These instrument s normally entail restri ctions on the use of 
"noisy" wagons. They can be implemented at  European, national or regional level: 
• One approach would be to impose  noise limit values for existing freight wagons (D1) , 
e.g. by extending the scope of the Noise TSI to the existing fleet while at the same time 
fixing a calendar for phasing out "noisy" wagons.  
• Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2):  On certain sensitive lines and/ or 
at certain times (at night), a ccess for noisy vehicle types or  train formations could be 
restricted.  
• The noise emission ceiling (D3) limits daily average emissions  at a certain location along 
the line. For example, current noise emission could be taken as a li mit to prevent noise 
from increasing if rail freight transport grows. Under Directive 2002/49/EC, Member 
States are legally competent to set such limits to environmental noise. The noise emission ceiling leaves it to the rail s ector to find optimal solutions: either to use low-noise wagons 
or to reduce speed or number of trains.  
• Under a tradable permit scheme (D4) , a specific permit issued by public authorities must 
be obtained to produce emissions. A polluter who does not have enough permits can either 
reduce emissions or buy additional permits on the market. The number of permits would be 
reduced every year until the retr ofitting target has been achieved. 
4.2. Pre-selection and combination of policy options 
A screening of the policy options against the criteria is leading to the identification of those 
policy options that are likely to meet the ob jectives the best. They are further assessed 
regarding their environmental, economic and social impacts. Th e screening is described in 
detail in Annex II. 
As result of this evaluation, policy options B (voluntary commitment),  C1 (differentiated 
track access charges), C3 (subsidies for retrof itting), D2 (operating restrictions for noisy 
freight wagons) and D3 (noise emission ceiling)  will be further dealt with in the impact 
assessment. 
The remaining policy options have been ch ecked regarding possible combinations as 
according to the results of the public consultation, no single instrument is regarded as sufficient to achieve the objectives. Therefore,  possible combinations of legal and economic 
instruments have been further analysed re garding complementarity aspects and possible 
synergies (see Annex II). It has been identifi ed that a combination of legal and financial 
instruments is likely to be most  effective and efficient because: 
• legal options not combined with financial ince ntives would result in  excessive burden on 
the rail sector, for the same reasons which le d to the exclusion of policy option D1 (see 
Annex II); 
EN 18   EN • financial incentives not combined with le gal measures could not guarantee alone a high 
retrofitting rate due to a lack of obligatory nature of these in strument. In particular at long 
term, accompanying legal measures could en sure the effectiveness of retrofitting 
programmes. Furthermore, possible double fundi ng and/or a distortion of competition are 
two main disadvantages of combinat ions of financial instruments. 
• Financial incentives combined with legal instruments put more pressure on the players 
concerned to retrofit. In exchange they receive the financial support necessary to avoid a negative modal shift from rail towards road. 
The results of this analysis are summarised in  Table 1, a detailed description is documented in 
Annex II. 
Table 1: Summary of the possible combinations of the selected policy options: Assessment of 
the degree of complementarity  
  
Differentiated 
track access 
charges 
Subsidies for 
retrofitting 
Operating 
restriction  
Noise 
emission 
ceiling 
Differentiated track access charges (C1)  Low Med. High Financial 
incentives Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)   High Med. 
Operating restriction for noisy wagons (D2)   Low Legal 
measures Noise emission ceiling (D3)    
As the combined measures are regarded as supe rior to the single policy options, the detailed 
impact assessment will focus on the two following combinations: 
1. "SOV": Subsidies for retrofitting, Operating restrictions and Voluntary commitment 
(C3 + D2 + B):  For this combination of instruments the e ffectiveness to addre ss hot spots would be 
higher compared to subsidies as single in strument. In additi on, negative economic 
impact on the rail sector caused by the intr oduction of operating restrictions would be 
compensated by the subsidies.  
2. "DEV": Differentiated track access charges, Emission ceiling and Voluntary 
commitment (C1 + D3 + B):  Noise emission ceilings could help to in crease the effectiveness of track access 
charges as RUs/ WOs would have more incentives for retrofitting than in case of a stand-alone policy option. In addition, synergy effects could be used as both instruments require the implementation of  monitoring systems to identify silent/ 
noisy wagons. Therefore, the administrative  costs per individual policy option could 
be reduced. 
A voluntary commitment by the sect or is strongly recommended in any future scenario; it is 
considered as a part of all policy options asse ssed. As stand-alone measures it strongly lacks 
effectiveness (see Annex II). 
EN 19   EN 4.3. Description of policy options selected  for the detailed impact assessment 
Status quo (baseline scenario) 
The baseline scenario is based on the assumption of no EU action to provide incentive for the 
increase of wagons equipped with low-noise t echnology and of the kilometres run by these. A 
zero retrofitting rate is assumed. 
Based on the existing legislation, the implemen tation of Directive 2002/49/EC and the Noise 
TSI is assumed to continue: 
• Noise action plans leading to ongoing infra structure-related ra il noise abatement 
programmes with an annual volume of up to 200 M€; 
• At the end of their lifetime, replacement of noisy wagons by new wagons equipped with 
low-noise technology complying with th e limit values of the Noise TSI. 
The other policy options are assessed against this  baseline scenario. Costs and benefits of the 
baseline scenario are set to zero. 
SOV (Subsidies for retrofitting, Operating  restrictions and Voluntary commitment) 
The SOV combined option is characterised as follows: 
• Subsidies  are granted on demand to cover retrofitting costs (on presentation of invoices 
and demonstration of eligibility by owner or with fixed rates per wagon type) and possibly 
extra administrative and maintenance costs (fixed percentage of retrofitting costs which also takes into account an extra margin to av oid penalising the owner) for a defined period 
after a wagon has been retrofitted. 
• Operating restrictions  are introduced for hot-spots at the ea rliest date which allows not to 
penalise the railway sector; th e restrictions consist of proh ibition for wagons not equipped 
with approved low-noise technology to circ ulate during the night time (22-6 h) on given 
lines/nodes/corridors already id entified as critical by Member  State authorities; wagons 
equipped with approved low-noise tec hnology are identified by  markings/ tags. 
Furthermore, the quality of track as influenc ing factor on noise emissions could be taken 
into account when defining operating restrictions. 
• Voluntary commitments  involve RUs (to monitor effi ciency of low-noise wagon 
management: these wagons should be privileged  in terms of load-fact or, mileage, use at 
hot spots) and IMs (to enfo rce operating restrictions). 
Following timetable is assumed for the option SOV: 
• 2008/2009: Member States prepare legal base s for funding programmes and for operating 
restrictions, notificati on of state aids to the European Commission; RUs prepare retrofitting 
programmes (in particular engineering in case of K-block retrofitti ng), preparation of 
voluntary commitment to ensure noise-redu cing fleet management (priority for high 
mileage wagons for retrofitting and use); 
• 2010 – 2013 (K+LL-blocks) resp. 2010 – 2016 (K-b locks): Retrofitting period (retrofitting 
of wagons funded by Member States); 
• 2014 (K+LL-blocks) resp 2017 (K-blocks): End of funding/ retrofitting programmes; 
operating restrictions in force. 
EN 20   EN DEV (Differentiated track access charges, Emission ceiling and Voluntary commitment) 
The DEV combined option considered in this  study is thus characterised as follows: 
• Differentiated track access charges  are put in place by IMs: a bonus is granted to RUs 
for each “wagon path” run by a low-noise wagon, automatically identified by tags. The 
level of the bonus is adjusted to  a certain mileage of wagons to  be retrofitted (10 000 km/y 
according to the objectives of the Communication) . Transfer of funds from RUs to WOs is 
to be ensured by market forces (the rental prices for silent wagons will increase compared 
to those for noisy wagons) and by making the discounts granted to RUs “transparent” to 
WOs so that the latter feel entitled  to claim a discount to the former. 
• Noise emission ceilings  are fixed at locations equipped w ith measurement stations (“noise 
traps”), on the basis of emissions measured before the date of ceiling-enforcement-start 
(end of retrofitting programme). Noisy wagons ar e automatically identified. Penalties are 
imposed by the IM on “noisy” RUs. Penalties ar e eventually transferre d from RUs to WOs. 
• Voluntary commitments  by the RUs in particular to transfer funds to WOs through 
discounts on demand. 
Following timetable is assumed for the option DEV: 
• 2008 – 2011: IMs prepare implementation of diffe rentiated track access charges (charging 
scheme, monitoring system); Member States pr epare legal basis for noise emission ceiling; 
RUs prepare retrofitting programmes (in part icular engineering in case of K-block 
retrofitting), preparation of voluntary commitment to ensure  that WOs benefit from bonus 
grated to RUs;  
• 2012 – 2014 (LL-blocks) resp. 2012 – 2018 (K-block s): Differentiated track access charges 
implemented, retrofitting period; 
• 2015 (LL-blocks) resp 2019 (K-blocks): End of  funding/ retrofitting programmes; noise 
emission ceilings in force. 
EN 21   EN 5. A NALYSIS OF IMPACTS  
5.1. Basic assumptions for the impact assessment 
This impact assessment is based on following assumptions: 
• The geographical scope is lim ited to EU Member States with a 1435 mm standard gauge 
system. Within these interope rable networks action is need ed at EU level as national 
measures are of limited effectiveness (see se ction 2). As result, of the EU-27 Member 
States, only the 18 countries needed to be considered accounting for 89.5% of the EU-27 
freight fleet and 83.9% of the net tkm transported in the EU-27.  
Non-standard gauge countries are not consid ered since the wagons of their networks 
cannot run on the large European standard ga uge network. The problem of noise emitted 
by these wagons could be addressed more effe ctively by the individu al countries, not at 
European level. However, if required the me thodology applied in this  report can easily be 
extended to these wide-gauge networks, if th e problems are to be addressed at the EU 
level.  Non-EU countries are consider ed only qualitatively. It is not  possible for them to be 
addressed directly by the Community. The countries sharing the 1435 mm network are 
mainly the Balkan countries (fl eet of 4% of that of the 18  Impact Assessment countries), 
Switzerland (all wagons retrofitted by 2015 according to the ongoing retrofitting 
programme), Norway (share of 0.4% of the European 1435 mm fleet). 
• LL-blocks are currently not fully homologated by UIC. However, as they are likely to be 
economically more viable for retrofitting that K-blocks, two scenarios are considered for 
the policy options:  1. LL-Blocks will never be homologated and retrofitting is fully based on K-blocks ("Retrofitting with K-blocks");  2. LL-blocks will be available at large scale as from January 2011 (before this date, K-blocks will be used; given the fact that at  end of 2007, 3 different LL-blocks received a 
provisional homologation and that one of them  passed all tests according to the UIC leaflet 
541-4
19, this scenarios has a certa in likelihood ("Retrofitting with K- and LL-blocks"). 
• Effects will be considered in the time-fra me 2009 – 2024. The effects of the different 
policy options will be evaluated until 2030. The degree of uncertainty of the monetary 
values of costs and, most of all, benefits at  later dates was reckoned to be too significant 
for a robust analysis. The standard discounting rate for Commission impact assessments of 
4% has been applied. 
• 100% compliance with all policy measures is a ssumed in order to compare the potential of 
the instruments. At a later stage, this a ssumption is subject to a critical review. 
• A significant number of wagons has been built between 1979 and 1984. As it is likely to 
have a strong impact on costs and benefits of  retrofitting, two scenar ios are applied to the 
policy options:  1. Limit birthdate 1979: all wagons built after 1979 are retrofitted;  2. Limit birthdate 1984: all wagons built after 1984 are retrofitted. 
• Wagon lifetime has been assumed to equal bogie lifetime (frame, major suspension 
elements), in average 35 years is used for the lifetime. 
                                                
 
19 UIC leaflet 541-4 "Brakes - Brakes with compositi on brake blocks - General conditions for certification 
of composite brake blocks" 
EN 22   EN • Wagons equipped with low-noise blocks (K and LL) have an overall noise emission 
reduction of 8 dB on average track. This fi gure considers the noise emission reduction by 
K- and LL-blocks on smooth rail of about 12-13 dB according to measurements carried out 
in 200720 as well as factors limiting the noise reduction as average roughness of rails, 
switches, curves, braking noise and the noise leve l of locomotives that is assumed not to be 
reduced.  
As result following scenarios are used for th e comparison of policy options under different 
assumptions: 
Table 2: Scenarios for the impact assessment 
 K-blocks K- & LL-blocks 
Limit birthdate 1979 Retrofitting wagons put into 
service in 1979 or later with K-blocks Retrofitting wagons put into service in 
1979 or later with LL-blocks (as from 2011; use of K-blocks in 2010) 
Limit birthdate 1984 Retrofitting wagons put into 
service in 1984 or later with K-blocks Retrofitting wagons put into service in 
1984 or later with LL-blocks (as from 2011; use of K-blocks in 2010) 
 
5.2. Impacts of the policy options on the retrofitting programme 
The different financial options act as incentive s for retrofitting and thus have a significant 
effect on the retrofitting rate. 
The selected range in terms of duration of the retrofitting program me with the K-block 
solution is 7 years; there is no point consider ing periods of less than 7 years (the nominal 
interval for periodic maintena nce is about 6 – 12 years) sin ce there would be costs for the 
unavailability of wagons and in addition a potential saturation of workshop capacity. 
Since the retrofitting programme with LL-bloc ks is less expensive and workshop capacities 
are no constraint, the selected duration of the retrofitting period is 3 years. 
The policy options considered have been diffe rentiated according to specific characteristics 
and parameters in particular the ones listed here. 
• Starting date : year in which the retrofitting programme will start. Both the SOV and DEV 
options necessitate a relatively long lead-in time. This leads to  the considerat ion of a zero 
retrofitting rate for the first few years of the time frame. 
• Retrofitting time frame : period between the first a nd the last retrofitted wagon. 
• Annual retrofitting rate : average number of wag ons retrofitted per year. 
• Time for 100% silent wagons  (years): number of years requi red to reach a fleet composed 
totally of retrofitted and new wagons  (equipped with K-or LL-blocks). 
• Wagons to be retrofitted : total number of wagons that have  to be retrofitted within the 
period considered. 
                                                 
20 Measurements have been carried out within the SILENCE project (http://www.s ilence-ip.org/site/) and 
within the Dutch noise innovation programme  
(http://www.innovatieprogrammageluid.nl/GBpage.asp?id=1071) 
EN 23   EN Table 3: Characteristics of  retrofitting programmes for different policy options  
 
Scenario Starting 
date for 
retro-
fitting Retro-
fitting time 
frame Average 
yearly 
retrofitting 
rate % of 
silent 
wagons 
in 2017 Time 
for100% of 
silent wagons 
(end year) Wagons 
to be 
retro-
fitted 
 Baseline - - 0 38% 2030 0 
SOV 
(1979) 1-2010 7 years  45,700 w/y 100% 2016 320,000 
SOV 
(1984) 1-2010 7 years  27,400 w/y 75% 2021 191,000 
DEV 
(1979) 1-2012 7 years  38,600 w/y 73% 2018 270,000 
K SCENARIO 
DEV 
(1984) 1-2012 7 years  27,100 w/y 64% 2021 190,000 
SOV 
(1979) 1-2010 4 years 99,500 w/y 100% 2013 397,400 
SOV 
(1984) 1-2010 4 years 50,000 w/y 75% 2021 191,000 
DEV 
(1979) 1-2012 3 years 124,000 w/y 100% 2014 372,000 
K+LL SCENARIO DEV 
(1984) 1-2012 3 years 64,000 w/y 75% 2021 191,000 
Retrofitting rates for K-blocks of 50,000 wagons per year are still considered to be within the 
capacity of workshops. In fact, since roughly 56 0,000 wagons need to be inspected in about 6 
years, workshops are currently capable of handling over 90,000 wagons per year.  
Retrofitting with LL-blocks can be  carried out at much higher rates since it simply requires 
brake block replacement which can be done outside the workshop. 
The following graphs show the evolution of the total fleet and of its composition in terms of 
retrofitted wagons and low-noise wagons (new  + retrofitted) as a function of time. 
0100,000200,000300,000400,000500,000600,000700,000800,000
2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031total fleet - w<1979
total fleet - w<1984
Low Noise
"retrofitted"
total fleet
end of time frame
FLEET
 
Figure 3 : Fleet development under scenario K – SOV (1979)   
EN 24   EN 0100,000200,000300,000400,000500,000600,000700,000800,000
2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031total fleet - w<1979
total fleet - w<1984
Low Noise
"retrofitted"
total fleet
end of time frame
FLEET
 
Figure 4 : Fleet development under scenario K – SOV (1984)  
0100,000200,000300,000400,000500,000600,000700,000800,000
2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031total fleet - w<1979
total fleet - w<1984
Low Noise
"retrofitted"
total fleet
end of time frame
FLEET
 
Figure 5: Fleet development under scenario K+LL – DEV (1979)  
0100,000200,000300,000400,000500,000600,000700,000800,000
2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031total fleet - w<1979
total fleet - w<1984
Low Noise
"retrofitted"
total fleet
end of time frame
FLEET
 
Figure 6: Fleet development under scenario K+LL – DEV (1984)  
5.3. Identification of impacts 
A set of impacts has been identified as possi ble effects of the proposed policy options. In 
accordance with the Commission guidelines  for impact assessment the economic, 
EN 25   EN environmental and social impacts are briefly de scribed in the tables of Annex III and further 
elaborated in sections 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6. 
5.4. Economic impacts 
5.4.1. Investment cost for retrofitting Total costs for the retrofitting programme depend not only on uni t cost of a retrofitted wagon 
but also on retrofitting time frame, speed of retrofitting, total numbe r of wagons to be 
retrofitted and discount rate (see Table 4).  
Table 4: Quantitative description of cost factor for retrofitting 
Factors Assumption and quantitative description 
Number of axles and 
type of wagon  According to the most recent analys is carried out for UIC/UIPUIRR wagons, 
30% of the EU-25 fleet has been cons idered made up of 2-axle wagons and 
70% of 4-axle wagons. 
Purchase of the components to be replaced  The price of a K block has been fixed at 23€ per shoe (accordingly with real 
cost figures given by different RUs) and for LL-blocks at 50 €. A yearly price decrease has been considered as a fully developed market could generate a 
price reduction.  
New brake cylinder: the purchase price of a brake cylinder could range 
between 700 and 1,000€;  
“empty-loaded valve” (replacement c ould be required replacement when 
cylinder is replaced): the valve could range between 900 and 1,350 € 
cost of the wheel: 800 €; it has been  assumed , based on experiences from the 
Swiss retrofitting programme, that 15% of  the wheels need to be replaced (K- 
and LL-block retrofitting) 
Labour cost of the replacement Level of labour cost is widely differing in EU; so it has been considered that 
cost per hour could range from 41 to 53 €. Thus the total labour cost ranges 
between 950 and 2,500 €. For the Impact Assessment the value taken is 1,700 
€ per wagon with K-blocks; for LL blocks  no labour costs has been included as 
the blocks need to be changed anyway.  
Cost of testing and 
accepting retrofitted 
vehicle According to an AEA Technology report21, the testing cost has been 
considered only for K-block retrofitti ng and has been estimated at 400€ per 
wagon 
Based on the assumptions described in the ta ble before, for the purpose of the impact 
assessment the total cost for re trofitting has been considered: 
– of 7.000 € per wagon with K-blocks solution; 
– of 1.360 € per wagon with LL-blocks solution. 
Thus retrofitting using LL-Blocks could be signif icantly less expensive: in the analysis, only 
direct costs, brake block cost and wheel re profiling will be considered for LL-Blocks.  
These investment costs per wagon lead to foll owing total investment costs for retrofitting 
programmes for the different scenarios between  260 million Euros and more than 2 billion 
Euros (see Table 5). Obviously, the total invest ment strongly depends on the technology used 
                                                 
21 AEA Technology: Status and Options for the reduction of noise emission from the existing European 
rail freight wagon fleet, January 2004. http://ec.euro pa.eu/transport/rail/studi es/doc/aeat-final.pdf  
EN 26   EN and the question if wagons built  between 1979 and 1984 are in cluded in the retrofitting 
programmes.  
Table 5: Investment costs fo r different policy options  
 Scenario Wagons to be retrofitted Total investment costs 
SOV (1979) 320,000 2,240 M€  
SOV (1984) 191,000 1,337 M€ 
DEV (1979) 270,000 1,890 M€ 
K  
DEV (1984) 190,000 1,330 M€ 
SOV (1979) 397,400 822 M€ 
SOV (1984) 191,000 542 M€ 
DEV (1979) 372,000 506 M€ 
K+LL  
DEV (1984) 191,000 260 M€ 
5.4.2. Maintenance cost 
There is only few data availabl e regarding life cycle costs of K-blocks (and even fewer for 
LL-blocks). Therefore, the imp act of retrofitting on maintenan ce costs can only be estimated. 
Some experiences from RUs or WOs show no impact on or even slightly reduced 
maintenance costs; however, others observed an increase. To ensure that all economic risks related to retrofitting are covered, conserva tive assumptions leading to an increase of 
maintenance costs have been made. 
As considered in the PWC study, the life cy cle costs per wagon depend mainly on the life 
span of the wheel and brake blocks. Different re searches suggest that composite brake blocks 
would lead to higher wheel wear (in comparison with cast iron blocks) but would show lower 
block wear in similar oper ating conditions. Following assu mptions have been made: 
• The wheel changing rate with K- and LL-blocks is higher than for cast iron blocks 
(350,000 km to wheel change compared to 480,000 km); 
• For K- and LL-blocks more wheel reprofili ng is required (230,000 km to wheel reprofiling 
instead of 350,000 km for cast iron blocks); 
• The wear rate for K blocks is 3 time s less than that of cast iron blocks; 
• The wear rate for LL blocks is 4 times less than  that of cast iron bloc ks (however, there is 
no full confirmation on the matter). 
This leads to a cost increase of 400 € per 100,000 wagon-km for K-blocks and 410 € for LL 
blocks, equivalent to 31% resp. 32%.  
EN 27   EN Table 6: Aggregated and di scounted maintenance costs for different policy options  
 Scenario Wagons to be retrofitted Discounted additional 
maintenance costs (2009-2024) 
SOV (1979) 320,000 317 M€  
SOV (1984) 191,000 226 M€ 
DEV (1979) 270,000 238 M€ 
K  
DEV (1984) 190,000 193 M€ 
SOV (1979) 397,400 406 M€ 
SOV (1984) 191,000 268 M€ 
DEV (1979) 372,000 347 M€ 
K+LL  
DEV (1984) 191,000 248 M€ 
Total maintenance costs strongly depend on th e number of wagons retrofitting and to less 
extend on the technology used as LL-blocks are according to the assumptions used likely to 
lead to slightly higher additional maintenance costs than K-blocks. 
5.4.3. Administrative cost 
K-block retrofitting requires te sts and authorisation procedur es for retrofitted wagons to 
ensure safety as the braking characteristics of K-block are significantly di fferent from those of 
cast iron blocks. The related costs – estimated at 400 € per wagon in average – are treated as part of the investment (see section 5.4.1). For th e different K-block scen arios the total testing 
and authorisation costs are in  the range of 76 to 128 M€.  
In addition, the implementation of the different  policy options will l ead for the different 
stakeholders to added costs for the organisa tion, planning, development and management of 
the specific programmes and structures needed. 
Moreover, the different policy options will gene rate the need (mainly for MS and IM) to 
create specific monitoring programmes to follo w and understand the real effectiveness of the 
wagon owners’ retrofitting prog ramme and the RUs’ performa nce (in case of operating 
restrictions or emission ceilings). 
Taking into account the above assu mptions the administrative costs have been estimated in 
terms of: 
• the total costs for added staff (
measured as FTE, Full Time Equivalent ) needed according to 
each policy option programme calculated as the sum over all 18 countries covered; 
• specifically for the noise emission ceiling inst rument (and the combined solution DEV), a 
noise monitoring system capable of identifyi ng noisy wagons/trains: total cost for the 
purchase, installation and maintenance of se veral noise monitoring stations has been 
considered.  
• Assuming a unit cost of €15,000 for each monito ring station and a total number of 160 
stations (sum of stations necessary in each  country, estimated on the basis of network 
complexity), it has been calculated for all 18 countries: 
– a start up cost of 2,76 M€ (purchasin g, installation and SW development); 
– a yearly cost for maintenance of 0,24 M€ 
EN 28   EN To set up and implement the polic y options including the installa tion of a monitoring system 
for the option DEV leads – according to the study – to initial administrative costs of 6.1 M€ for SOV and 11.2 M€ for DEV (mainly investment). 
For the estimation of the ongoing administrative co sts additional tasks re garding the financial 
transfers required, control and verification activi ties, additional tasks for the fleet management 
as well as maintenance of the monitoring syst em have been considered. The following table 
shows different figures for added ongoing ad ministrative costs of each policy option: 
Table 7: Added ongoing administrative costs for different policy options  
Actor SOV - subsidy SOV – operating 
restrictions DEV – diff. access 
charges DEV – emission 
ceiling 
MS  1.6 M€ 0.8 M€ - 1.6 M€ 
IM  - 3.6 M€ 1.7 M€ 1.6 M€ 
RU Incl. in WO 1.6 M€ 0.6 M€ - 
WO 1.3 M€ - - - 
total 2.9 M€ 6.0 M€ 2.3 M€ 3.2 M€ 
For the policy option SOV, the ongoing administrative costs would be about 3 million Euros 
during the first phase when subs idies are granted and subsequently after the introduction of 
operating restrictions about 6 million Euros. The costs for DEV are in the same order of magnitude, 2.3 million Euros in the first phase  and 5.5 M€ after the introduction of the 
emission ceiling (total for ceiling and charges in case the differentiation of access charges will 
be continued). This can be confirmed by inform ation provided by ProRail,  the Dutch IM, that 
the current track access charge sc heme is run by only two member s of staff; a differentiation 
would not add much complexity as detecti on, monitoring and invoicing are fully automated. 
Overall, with the exception of costs of testing and accepting wagons after having been 
retrofitted with K-blocks, the additional administ rative costs are negligible compared to the 
investment and maintenan ce costs of retrofitting. 
5.4.4. Funding for the retrofitting programme 
The possible modal shift from rail to road due to retrofitting costs (see section 5.5.2), could be 
avoided by public funding. Therefore, both combin ations of policy options contain measures 
to (party or fully) cove r costs of retrofitting.  
For the policy option SOV it can be assumed that the funding needed is equivalent to 100% of 
total investment for retrofit ting as the reimbursement of costs would be done based on 
evidence provided by the RU or WO. Transacti on costs are estimated as administrative costs 
in section 5.4.3. 
For the policy option DEV the calculation of th e funding to be provided by public authorities 
is more complex as the incentivising mechanis m is based on the fact that RUs will benefit 
from a discount on the track access charges. Th ese charges are currently imposed by each IM 
on a train-km basis, with corrections according to the specific situation (e.g. hour of day, 
passenger or freight train, etc.).  According to the political addr ess in the various EU countries 
regarding financing of track maintenance, the average values of charge per train-km vary 
from country to country (fro m under 1 €/tr-km to about 10 €/tr-km). Each single company 
will decide whether to retrofit and how many wa gons to retrofit on the basis of its own cost-
benefit analysis. It will use a relatively high di scount rate for this calculation (no less than 6%, 
probably 8% or 10%).  
EN 29   EN 010002000300040005000
0 0,01 0,02 0,03 0,04 0,05 0,06 0,07
European bonus value [€/w-km]Net Present Value of boni at 1/2009 [M€ ]DEV79 K (1/2011 - 12/2017)
DEV84 K (1/2011 - 12/2017)
DEV79 LL (1/2011 - 12/2014)
DEV84 LL (1/2011 - 12/2014)
K79
K84
LL79
LL84
 
Figure 7: Net Present Values of costs and bonuses for the DEV scenarios  
Under the assumption of a single European bo nus value for all 18 countries considered, a 
decision of the value to be take n should be based on the consider ation that this value affects 
the following: The total amount of funding requir ed by IMs from MS (total funding €) = (w-
km of low-noise wagons) × (bonus € / w-km). Figure 7 shows the Net Present Value (NPV, 
basis: January 2009) of total bonus es transferred to RUs as a function of the European bonus 
value for different scenarios (r etrofitting with K- or LL-bloc ks, limit birthdate 1979 / 1984), 
compared with the respective NPV of added co sts for retrofitting. The intersections between 
the horizontal lines representing costs and the other lines, representing bonuses transferred, 
indicate the values of European  bonus value required to cover 100% of total costs. It can be 
seen that for all scenarios these values range roughly from 2 to 2.5 cents / w-km. 
However, these calculations onl y apply to a theoretical, fully homogenous fleet. In reality, the 
annual mileage of wagons and the individual re trofitting costs are indi vidual characteristics 
for companies. The bonuses calculated for the fully homogenous fleet are no sufficient 
incentives for many wagon owners to retrofit their fleet. To ensure a high retrofitting rate, the 
bonus needs to be higher to in centivise even owners  not capable of r unning high mileages 
with their low-noise wagons and/ or with relatively high costs to  retrofit their wagons. 
In Figure 8 the values of bonuses necessary to incentivise such owners have been calculated 
assuming average mileages of 10,000-20,000-30,000 km  /year for their low-noise wagons and 
increments of unit costs for retrofitting of 50%-100% respect to average. The time required 
for complete return of investment has been take n as 8 years for retrofitting with K-blocks and 
4 years for retrofitting with LL-bl ocks. A sensitivity analysis to this parameter is shown in 
Figure 9. 
EN 30   EN 0,000,050,100,150,20
0 10000 20000 30000 40000average mileage of LN wagons [km/year]incentivising bonus value [€ / w-km ]
DEV79K 50%
DEV79K 100%
DEV84K - 50%
DEV84K - 100%
K-blocks - return on 
investment in 8 years
0,000,050,100,150,20
0 10000 20000 30000 40000average mileage of LN wagons [km/year]incentivising bonus value [€ / w-km ]
DEV79LL - 50%
DEV79LL - 100%
DEV84K - 50%
DEV84LL - 100%LL-blocks - return on 
investment in 4 years
 
Figure 8: Bonus needed to incentivise retrof itting for owners under different conditions  
0,000,050,100,150,20
02468 1 0
time for return on investment [years]incentivising bonus value [€ / w-km ]
DEV79K 50%
DEV79K 100%
DEV84K - 50%
DEV84K - 100%
K-blocks - average 
mileage: 20,000 km/year
0,000,050,100,150,20
02468 1 0
time for return on investment [years]incentivising bonus value [€ / w-km ]
DEV79LL - 50%
DEV79LL - 100%
DEV84LL - 50%
DEV84LL - 100%LL-blocks - average 
mileage: 20,000 km/year
 
Figure 9: Sensitivity of the incentivising bonus value to the time for return on investment 
These calculations lead to valu es for the bonus in the range of 3 – 9 cents/ w-km according to 
the scenario, provided that all companies are capable of reaching 20,000 km / year on average 
for their low-noise wagons. However, for K-bloc ks there are serious doubts if the necessary 
incentives can be granted for wagons with an annual mileage of 10,000 km  that – according to 
the objectives of this initiative – be covered by the retrofitting programmes. 
If bonuses were granted in  this order of magnitude the total funding required to  incentivise all 
or almost all wagon owners to retrofit would be about 25 to 85% higher than the total costs of retrofitting. To avoid such “overincentives” or  subsidies to RUs and WOs, the aggregated 
bonus for a silent wagon needs to be limited to the retrofitting costs. However, the exact 
determination of these values is difficult. Ther efore, the funds to be provided by the Member 
States are estimated to be about 20% higher than  the costs. This leads to following figures for 
the funding required for the different scenarios: 
EN 31   EN Table 8: Required funding for different policy options  
 Scenario Wagons to be retrofitted Total investment Required funding 
SOV (1979) 320,000 2,240 M€  2,240 M€ 
SOV (1984) 191,000 1,337 M€ 1,337 M€ 
DEV (1979) 270,000 1,890 M€ 2,268 M€ 
K  
DEV (1984) 190,000 1,330 M€ 1,596 M€ 
SOV (1979) 397,400 822 M€ 822 M€ 
SOV (1984) 191,000 542 M€ 542 M€ 
DEV (1979) 372,000 506 M€ 607 M€ 
K+LL  
DEV (1984) 191,000 260 M€ 312 M€ 
5.4.5. Reduced investment for infrastructu re-related noise abatement programme 
The retrofitting programme connected with the SOV and DEV options could allow the 
reduction of infrastructure investment for noise reduction (for instance for noise barriers by a 
percentage of programme and/or of total cost s). In fact many areas in which population is 
subjected to noise exceeding na tional limits would benefit fr om a decrease in rolling noise 
due to freight wagons which could in principle l ead to noise returning wi thin legal limits, thus 
avoiding infrastructure-related meas ures. This of course depends on the relative importance of 
the other sources of rail noise (squeal-, tr action-, aerodynamic-, pant ograph- noise etc.). 
However, it is important to consider that:  
• to have a higher benefit of noise abatement, a high fraction of the fleet needs to be silent; 
considering this assumption, a transient period be fore retrofitting reduces  rail noise has to 
be managed (for instance until 2014 or 2015); 
• decisions on infrastructure-related measures ar e often taken at a different political level 
(national, regional or even local) leading to difficulties of co-ordinating these programmes 
with retrofitting activities; 
• investment structures are “rigid” and th ere are difficulties in  changing scheduled 
investments (or eventually in shifting budget fr om IM to RU or WO); there are many long-
period programmes that cannot be  rescheduled or reorganised in the mid-term; a reduction 
in investments has been assumed possible only after 5-10 years; 
• infrastructure investments solve problems that are not only related to rolling noise of 
freight wagons running at ni ght (such as noise emissi ons of passenger trains). 
Moreover it is very difficult to estimate the to tal reduction for infrastructure-related noise 
abatement costs and so far, no robust data is available. 
Nevertheless, an order of magn itude can be estimated on the basis of the results of the EU-
funded research project STAIRRS22 which demonstrated that the same order of benefits in 
terms of affected population can  be achieved with infrastruc ture-related no ise abatement 
measures at costs of 2 to 4 times higher than those for retrofitting with K-blocks. 
This impact assessment has estimated costs for retrofitting with K-bloc ks of approximately 
2,000 M€ (assuming 1979 as the limit birthdate). Th e same results would be obtained with 
                                                 
22 http://www.stairrs.org/ 
EN 32   EN investments in infrastructure-related measur es of 4,000 – 8,000 M€, leading to savings for 
Member States in the order of 2,000 – 6,000 M€ ove r the time-frame considered here. It is 
interesting to compare these figures with the estimates from the UIC status report23 which 
considers a value of up to 10,000 M€ in infrastruc ture-related measures i nvestments. Of these, 
according to the above calculation 4,000 – 8,000 M€ would be saved, leading to total expenses of 2,000 – 6,000 M€ for infrastruc ture-related measures plus 2,000 M€ for 
retrofitting. 
To summarise, based on the findings of the ST AIRRS project and on the estimates of the UIC 
status report savings due to a retrofitti ng programme would am ount to approx. 2,000-6,000 
M€ (for the K-block scenario s) and 3,000-7,500 M€ in case of LL-block retrofitting. But 
again, these figures are purely theoretical of  the above reasons. Regarding the two policy 
options, the differences in im pact on reduced investment fo r infrastructure-related noise 
abatement programme are not significant. 
5.4.6. Reduced investment cost for renewal of fleet 
Over the past decades, the number of freight  wagons in Europe ha s decreased while the 
transport performance in tkm remained about st able. Even in very recent years when rail 
freight started to grow the trend towards smaller fleets continued. This phenomenon could 
easily explained by the average mileage of wago ns in Europe of about 20,000 km/a, much less 
than e.g. in the road sector. Therefore, it has been  assumed for this impact assessment that this 
trend will continue and in average 25,000 wagons will be put out of service per year while 
20,000 new ones will be purchased. This leads to avoided annual investment costs of 450 M€ 
(assuming 90,000 € per wagon). 
Since differentiated track access charges offe r the possibility of higher bonuses if higher 
mileages are run, the DEV option may stimulat e an improvement of fleet management in 
terms of know-how on how to obtain high average m ileages for a part of the fleet or even the 
whole fleet. This would boost the impacts describe d above. However, this impact is extremely 
difficult to quantify. If a 10% contribution of di fferentiated track access charges to the overall 
efficiency gain was assumed, the economi c benefit would be 45 M€ per year.  
For SOV, there are no strong economic incentiv es to support the deve lopment towards higher 
efficiency of wagon use. 
5.4.7. Reduced maintenance costs for infrastructure 
Due to the higher wheel wear caused by composite brake blocks (the wheel surface is 
polished), it has been observed that the numbe r of wheel defects is reduced for low-noise 
wagons (in particular wheel flats, cracks and w ear of profile according to experiences of the 
Dutch noise innovation programme)
24. This high quality of wheel surfaces has a positive 
impact on the rail and, due to less rail wear, infrastructure  maintenance costs are reduced. 
However, the quantification of this impact is not yet possible. 
A similar effect has been observed in The Netherlands after the introduction of the wheel 
monitoring system Quo vadis/ Gotcha leading th e a decrease of infrastructure maintenance 
costs by 5 to 10%25.  
                                                 
23 UIC: Noise Reduction in European Railway Infrastructure. Status Report 2007.  
http://www.uic.asso.fr/download.php/environnement/reductionbruitinfra_en.pdf 
24 J. Peen: Whispering Trains - Noise reduction on Freight Wagons. Presentation at the UIC Noise  
Workshop November 2007. http://www.innovatieprogrammageluid.nl/GBpage.asp?id=1054 
25 Lloyd’s Register Rail Europe: Project summaries;  
http://www.gotchamonitoringsystems.com/pdf/References.pdf 
EN 33   EN Therefore, it can be assumed that the implementation of retrofitting programmes would result 
in savings for IMs. These savings could be used  to reduce the track access charges for silent 
wagons accordingly. 
5.4.8. Competition within the rail sector 
The costs for retrofitting are most probably not  equally distributed among the RUs and WOs. 
At least for K-block retrofit ting, large WOs and RUs (in part icular incumbent operators) 
could benefits from economies of scale, when purchasing supplies and in particular by lower 
tests costs as tests are required per wagon type. This could be a competitive disadvantage for 
newcomers on the rail freight markets. 
Policy option DEV incentivises a high mileage of wagons (see section 5.4.6). This gives a 
clear competitive advantage to private WO a nd new RUs as these companies use approaches 
for fleet management different from the ones applied by incumbents resulting in annual 
mileage of in some cases more than 100,000 km. 
Certainly, these effects are very difficult to quantify. Overall, the impact on competition 
within the rail freight sector is rather li mited even if policy option DEV provides some 
advantages for small RUs and private WOs. 
5.4.9. Influence of restrictions for noisy wagons on non-EU countries 
The non-EU States whose wagons can run on the networks of the 18 countries considered 
(Balkan countries, Switzerland and Norway) acc ount for just over 4% of  the total fleet. In 
Switzerland a retrofitting programme is ongoing will be completed by 2015. The other States 
may be incentivised to retrof it their wagons with the DEV op tion, due to the access charge 
bonus. However, an agreement on their volunt ary commitment would be appropriate.  
A voluntary commitment by these countries to provide financial support for retrofitting of 
wagons registered in these count ries is essential for the SOV option in order to provide the 
necessary incentives. 
5.5. Environmental impacts 
5.5.1. Reduction of sound pressure levels 
As the noise reduction for K- and LL-blocks is at  the same level (8 dB are assumed for this 
impact assessment, the total average noise re duction achieved by retrof itting only depends on 
two factors, the number of vehicles retrofitte d and the time when retrofitting takes places. 
Figure 10 and Figure 11 show th e noise reduction over the time of  the different policy options 
and scenarios compared to the status quo option. Certainly, the particular situation at specific 
railway lines could deviate from the average development according to the traffic development and the rolling stock used. 
EN 34   EN 
 
Figure 10 : Noise reduction under scenarios K  
 
Figure 11 : Noise reduction under scenarios K+LL  
Obviously, the level of noise reduction achieve d is the same for all options including the 
status quo. The only differences are the time when is reductions can be realised and the noise 
reduction level in the course of the retrofitting programme. 
According to the calculations, the maximum noise reduction is earli er achieved by the LL-
block scenarios of option SOV 79 and DEV 79  (silent fleet by 2013 resp. 2014) followed by 
the K-block based scenarios of the same policy options (full re duction by 2016 resp. 2018). 
Regarding the noise reduction, retrofitting th e wagons with a birthdate between 1979 and 
1984 shortens the time until a full reduction is obtained.  
5.5.2. Influence on the modal split between rail and road (environmental effects) 
In accordance with the assumptions of this im pact assessment, RUs or WOs will have an 
added cost because of the re trofitting programme and increm ental maintenance costs. To 
EN 35   EN cover this maintenance cost increase, unless adequately funded, RUs will apply a proportional 
increase to the final customer for the rail transportation services. These considerations fully 
apply for the policy option SOV, as only the initial investment can be covered by subsidies. 
For DEV, these costs could be considered fo r the calculation of the bonus for silent wagons. 
According to the main literature, price changes often affect consumer decisions and transport 
activities tend to follow this pattern. This has been considered through the elasticity of the 
demand related to the price change. Even if the elasticity could vary over a wide range 
depending on the type of freight and the commod ity group, it is calculated that this value 
could range between -0.25 and -0.3526. Within the analysis -0.35 le vel has been considered (as 
the worst case): this means that a 10% cost/price  increase of the rail transport service reduces 
rail traffic by 3.5%. 
The following table shows different rail traffi c decreases according to different levels of 
incentives for policy option SOV (K brake bl ock scenario, 1984 as wagon limit birthdate). 
Table 9: Estimated transport price increase and modal (K, SOV, li mit birthdate: 1984) 
Level of 
incentive 27 Total Price Increase 
(€/tr-km) Average increase 
in pricing (%) Expected rail 
traffic decrease (%) Expected rail traffic 
decrease (mio tkm) 
No Subsidies 0.20 1.09% 0.40% 4,035 
50% of costs 0.10 0.57% 0.21% 2,115 
75% of costs 0.06 0.31% 0.11% 1,155 
100% of costs 0.01 0.05% 0.02% 196 
Rail demand reduction has to be satisfied by altern ative modes of transport. So it is probable 
that the variation in rail de mand could be followed by an incr ease in road transport demand. 
According with the last assumption, a cross-elas ticity has been considered to figure the 
variation of road traffic demand corresponding to variations in rail transport demand.  
Accordingly, total modal shift towards road traffic will be between 0.02% and 0.4% of the 
total rail demand, equivalent to 200 million tkm (in case of incentives covering 100% of the 
costs of the retrofitting programme) resp. 4 bil lion tkm (in case of no incentives) according to 
the different scenarios within policy option SOV.  For DEV, these values are lower or even 0 
if a bonus covering additional maintenance costs is sustained after the end of the retrofitting 
period.  
Based on these calculations emission factor s for the most significant pollutants (CO 2, NOx, 
PM) have been applied to the estimated increase of road traffic in order to estimate environmental costs. The emission factor s are derived from the TREMOVE database
28.  
The following table shows different net effects of  increased emission (due to the increase of 
road traffic) and reduction of emi ssion (due to reduction of rail tra ffic) in case of the lack of 
financial support for retrofitting. Similar calculations could be carried out for road traffic 
noise and fatal accidents. 
                                                 
26 Victoria Transport Policy Institute (http://www.vtp i.org/tdm/); RMH Breugem, DP van Vuuren, B van 
Wee, “Comparison of global passenger tr ansport models and available literature” 
27 The incentive considers only the co st of the retrofitting programme. 
28 TREMOVE is a policy assessment tool developed by KU Leuven for the European Commission, DG 
Environment (http://www.tremove.org/) 
EN 36   EN Table 10: Estimated environmental impacts of a price increase of rail transport (K-blocks, 
limit birthdate: 1984) 
 Increase of emission due to 
the increase of road traffic Emission reduction due to 
the reduction of rail traffic Net effect (no 
funding) Net effect 
(SOV) 
NO x +2,998 t/y -483 t/y +2,515 t/y +126 t/y 
PM 10 +75 t/y -29 t/y +45 t/y +2 t/y 
CO 2 +282 Mt/y -27 Mt/y +254 Mt/y +13 Mt/y 
The total increase in road transport emissions is much higher than the reduction of air 
pollutants and greenhouse gases exp ected as result of rail tra ffic decrease. In case of full 
financial support for the investment  costs related to re trofitting (according to the option SOV), 
the figures for the net increase of emissions are significantly lower. 
Concerning the savings of investment costs for the rail sector (see sec tion 5.4.6), a decrease of 
transport prices and subsequently an increase d demand for rail transport could e expected 
(modal shift from road to rail). Based on th e rough estimation of 45 M€ annual saving for 
DEV, the average price decrease would be  0.15% and the rail traffic increase 0.06% 
equivalent to about 600 mio tkm. This effect would result in environmental net benefits of 
about 400 t NOx, 8 t PM-10 and 38 Mt CO 2 less emitted per year. 
Overall, the environmental impact of a possibl e modal shift is difficult to quantify and very 
likely to be insignificant provided that retrofittin g will be at least partly  supported (directly or 
indirectly) by public funds. For DEV, the overa ll impact could be positive or negative, for 
SOV a negative impact is more likely. As K-block retrofitting is more expensive, the risk of modal shift towards road is higher for the K-block based scenarios. 
5.5.3. Traction energy saving due to re duced weight of brake blocks 
The replacement of cast iron brake blocks by K- or LL-blocks leads to a weight reduction of 
wagons as K-blocks and organic LL-block are si gnificantly lighter (less than 50% of the mass 
of cast iron blocks). For sinter LL bloc ks, this reduction is less significant. 
Assuming an average reduction of 125 kg per wagon and a specific energy consumption of 
20 Wh per tkm for relatively fast , long-distance freight with electric tracti on, the total savings 
are about 50 kWh per year and wagon resp. in th e range of 10 to 20 to GWh, equivalent to the 
electricity consumption of 3,000 to 6,000 average households. 
The relative reduction of tracti on energy consumption of rail  freight is less than 0.1%; 
however, savings of 5 to 10 Mt CO
2 emission and 1.1 – 2.4 M€ can  be expected (depending 
on the number of wagons retrofitted according to the policy options and scenarios). The 
environmental impact of this effect is in the same order of magnitude as the one of a possible 
modal shift under option SOV. 
5.5.4. Reduced risk of forest fires 
This issue has proved to be rele vant in Portugal. In this coun try the use of composite brake 
blocks (LL blocks for freight wagons) has been stimulated among other reasons in order to 
reduce the occurrence of bush fi res. Although not a decisive impact, it may have certain 
relevance in terms of savings for Member States  in the countries of Southern Europe which 
add to the other benefits of retrof itting wagons with composite blocks. 
The reduction of the risk of forest fires is dir ectly linked to the number of vehicles to be 
retrofitting and the timing of retrofitting. Theref ore, the difference between the policy options 
EN 37   EN DEV and SOV are limited. More important are th e technology used (K- or LL-blocks) and the 
decision whether the wagons built between  1979 and 1984 are retrofitted or not. 
5.6. Social impacts 
5.6.1. Reduction of affected population 
Reduction of number of people affected 
The reduction of the population affected by ra il noise is calculated based on the noise 
emission reduction and data/ assumption on the di stribution of citizens along main rail lines. 
Unfortunately, the results  of the noise mapping exercise ac cording Directive 2002/49/EC have 
not been available for this impact assessment. 
Therefore, older existing information has been  used. Due to the im portance of affected 
population data and to the lack of specific information, two diffe rent data bases for affected 
population have been identified for the purpose of the impact assessment, in particular: 
• population calculated on the basis of data from Entec report fo r DG-ENV (2006): these 
figures estimating the number of peopl e exposed to leve ls above 65 dB L den derived from 
calculations on the density of  rail-noise-affected populati on reported in a document for 
DG-ENV by Entec UK Ltd and represent rail noise hot spots in Europe;  
• population according to the INFRAS-IWW report (2004)29: the reduction of affected 
population is calculated assuming that noise exposure levels are reduced by the same 
amount as noise emitted (approximation), that 80%  of the population affected by rail noise 
are affected by rail freight noise only (and 20% by passenger rail noise only) and that 
population is distributed according to levels of noise discretised  into 1 dB intervals (the 
discretisation leads to the particular shape of the benefit curves). This study uses 55 dB 
Lden as threshold for the estimation of the number of people exposed. 
As Directive 2002/49/EC retains 55 dB L den as criterion, only estimates based on the 
INFRAS-IWW report are used fo r this impact assessment. 
The following charts illustrate the effects of the different policy options on the achievable 
reduction of the affected population figures. 
                                                 
29 Infras, IWW: External costs of transport – update study 2004.  
http://www.uic.asso.fr/html/environnement/ cd_external/docs/externalcosts_en.pdf 
EN 38   EN 
 
Figure 12 : Reduction of affected population, K-scenario  
 
Figure 13 : Reduction of affected popul ation, K+LL-scenario  
The reduction of number of persons affected by railway noise is the same for all options 
including the status quo. According to the INFRA-IWW method used, about 16.5 million 
citizens would benefits from retrofitting as th e noise level they are exposed to will fall under 
55 dB.  
Regarding the comparison of policy options and s cenarios, the considerations made in section 
5.5.1 also apply to the reduction of the number of persons affected. 
Reduction of health effects 
The reduction of the levels of exposure of the population to rail noise leads to a reduction of 
health effects. Recent projects show that th ese can be quite significant. For example the 
World Health Organisation (WHO) is coordi nating the EBD (Environmental Burden of 
EN 39   EN Disease) noise project on guidelines for the es timation of the disease burden generated by 
environmental noise30. The health effects investig ated in the project are: 
– Cardiovascular disease; 
– Sleep disturbance; 
– Annoyance; 
– Tinnitus; 
– Cognitive impairment; 
– Hearing loss. 
The policies presented in this impact assessment cer tainly lead to the bene ficial effects listed 
above. However, such benefits are currently diffi cult to quantify and the results have a high 
level of uncertainty. The estim ates are based on the amount of population no longer exposed 
to rail freight noise as well as on dose-effect relationships (for details see PWC study). As a 
result, the reduction of number of persons subj ect to annoyance and sleep disturbance due to 
rail freight noise is estimated at the beginning and end of th e retrofitting programmes. This 
year varies according to the policy option (see section 5.2).  
Table 11: Estimates of the persons subjected to different levels of annoyance and sleep 
disturbance  
 millions of persons affected 
Impact 2009 End of retrofitting ∆ [%] 
High annoyance 5.3 1.7 -69% 
Annoyance 6.9 2.6 -67% 
High sleep disturbance 1.6 0.5 -67% 
Sleep disturbance 3.7 1.3 -66% 
Low sleep disturbance 7.3 2.6 -65% 
According to these estimates a reduction of 65 – 70 % of annoye d and highly annoyed 
persons is expected respect to the initial situ ation once the whole fleet is composed of low-
noise wagons. Similarly, a reduction of 65 – 70% of persons subject to sleep disturbance is 
expected.  
Monetisation  
The monetary quantification carr ied out in this impact assessment of the benefits deriving 
from the reductions in persons affected and s ound pressure levels is thus purely indicative. 
However, interesting conclusions can be drawn from the comparis on of costs and the benefits 
thus calculated. 
The monetary value attributed to the noise  reduction benefits has been determined 
intentionally a simple way, taki ng into account the values availa ble in literatu re concerning 
annoyance and sleep disturbance. Recent studies showed that significant health effects may 
arise from exposure to noise. In order to keep the analysis simple, a value of 10 € per dB and 
person and year has been applied verified by a sensitivity analysis (see PWC study for 
details). 
                                                 
30 http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/national/en/ 
EN 40   EN Table 12: Monetised benefits for the affect ed population for different policy options  
 Scenario Benefit  
SOV (1979) 7,100 M€ 
SOV (1984) 4,100 M€ 
DEV (1979) 5,800 M€ 
K 
DEV (1984) 4,400 M€ 
SOV (1979) 9,500 M€ 
SOV (1984) 4,400 M€ 
DEV (1979) 8,400 M€ 
K+LL 
DEV (1984) 5,200 M€ 
Obviously, the monetised benef its are related to the reduc tion of the number of people 
affected. The highest benefits are expect ed for the options SOV 1979 and DEV 1979 when 
LL blocks are used. The related scenario wi th 1984 as limit birthdate shows significantly 
lower benefits. The monetised benefits of SOV scenarios are in general slightly higher than those of the DEV scenarios. 
5.6.2. Reduction of weight handled 
Low-noise brake blocks are made of composite materials resulting in substantially lighter 
blocks compared with cast iron blocks (typic al cast iron block mass: 13 kg, typical composite 
block mass: 4-8 kg).So K- and LL-bloc ks are easier and safer to handle. 
This leads to a positive impact on health of maintenance workers as the number of back 
problems will decrease. This impact is not deci sive in terms of the choice between the SOV 
and DEV options. However, policy options leadi ng to fast retrofitting of a high number of 
vehicles, in particular SOV 1979 and DEV 1979 using LL-blocks provide the highest positive 
impact.  
5.6.3. Increased transparency 
The implementation of some instruments conn ected with the different policy options for 
retrofitting can lead to the avai lability of data on noise reduc tion that would not otherwise be 
gathered just on the basis of the European Noise Di rective. This is true in particular for Noise 
Emission Ceilings if these are enforc ed on the basis of measurements. 
5.6.4. Social impacts in non-EU countries 
Non-EU countries with 1435 mm rail systems wo uld benefit from the retrofitting programmes 
implemented in EU Member States. The extent of the reduction of number of people affected 
by rail noise strongly depends of national retr ofitting programmes in additional to the ones of 
EU Member States and is therefore not quantified in this impact assessment. 
Nevertheless, assuming that the share of silent wagons going to these countries is the same as 
on the territory of the EU Member States, up to 1 million citizens would benefit from noise 
emission reductions under the threshold of 55 dB  (according to the re sults of the INFRAS-
IWW report, see section 5.6.1).  
5.7. Sensitivity analyses 
For some main parameters or assumptions, sensi tivity analyses have been carried out and the 
results are briefly presented in the following. More details are described in the PWC study.  
EN 41   EN Date of full availabi lity of LL-blocks  
For the calculation of costs and benefits of retrofitting, it has been as sumed for the scenario 
"K+LL" that LL-blocks will be fully homologated in January 2011.  
Assuming an earlier availability for policy op tion SOV (as for DEV, the implementation of 
the differentiated track access ch arges has been identified as th e time-critical step) costs and 
benefits would change as follows: 
• The implementation of the retrofitting program me with LL- instead of K-blocks for the 
first years permits a cost decrease of roughly 17% (1979 birthdate) and 29% (1984 
birthdate) respect to the "K +LL" scenario (see Figure 14); 
• Due to a higher retrofitting rate , the number of silent wagons in the first years would be 
higher and therefore, the bene fit regarding the reduction of number of people affected by 
noise would increase by at least 10%. 
Therefore, it can be concluded that the availability of LL-bloc ks is a crucial issue for both, 
costs and benefits of retrofitting. 
2,25
1,221,021,41
0,84
0,60
00,511,522,53
KK + L L L L-29%-29%-17%-17%SOV
1979 1984 
Figure 14: Total costs of retr ofitting for policy option SOV a nd different technologies used 
Maintenance costs 
A variation of parameters determining maintena nce costs leads to a range of –200 € to +3000 
€ additional annual costs. Obviously, the im pact on maintenance costs is wagon- and 
company specific. Unfortunately, there are no ex act figures available to day. However, it can 
be concluded that there is at le ast a risk of additional costs. Therefore, financial support seems 
to be needed to provide the necessary incentives. 
However, there is a potential for savings as  two examples of retr ofitting programmes for 
freight wagons in Europe show that at least cost-neutral solutions are technical feasible: 
• In the United Kingdom, 80% of the freight wa gons are equipped with disc brakes or K-
blocks. Some vehicles have been retrofitted with K-blocks, for economic reasons as the 
life-cycle costs are lower. K-blocks produced  in the USA are used, for which purchasing 
costs are about 25% lower than of th e UIC homologated European K-blocks31. 
• In Portugal, the freight fleet of about 4,000 wagons has been retrofitted with LL-blocks 
(ICER T903 and JURID 833) in 1997 and in addition, passenger carriages have been 
                                                 
31 Oral information received from Mr C.  Carr, Department of Transport, UK 
EN 42   EN equipped with L-blocks. The costs were borne  by CP, the incumbent operator. Since then, 
no technical problems occurred a nd life-cycle costs decreased32. 
To make best use of this potential, policy options providing incentives for such cost 
reductions are needed, DEV does provide such incentives.  
Main risks of the two policy opti ons regarding the implementation 
The option SOV is based on the assumption of  subsidies covering 100% of the initial 
investment. There are no experiences with stat e aids for rail noise abatement measures for 
rolling stock. However, according to the draft state aid guidelines for railways33, a funding 
rate of 50% is regarded as proportionate fo r such cases. Above these thresholds Member 
States must demonstrate the need and pr oportionality of the measures in question. 
It can be concluded that the subsidy component  of policy option SOV might be a weak point 
regarding its legal compliance. Funding rates sign ificantly below 100% risk to be ineffective 
(RUs and WOs do not make use of the subsidy sche me and do not retrofit) or to lead to high 
financial burdens for railways if retrofit ting is implemented (e.g. to avoid operating 
restrictions as part of SOV). 
For policy option DEV, individual  approaches at national level would risk not being effective 
as the incentive for railway undertakings might not be sufficient if only some Member States 
introduced a bonus (as a critical ma ss is needed to provide suffici ently incentives to European 
RUs/WOs), the timeframes were contradictory and different types of silent wagons were 
treated differently. Furthermore, administrativ e costs for non-harmonised schemes would be 
unnecessarily high. Therefore, the common a nd simultaneous implementation of this 
instrument leading to the necessary incentives for retrofitting needs to be ensured and the 
harmonisation at European leve l is crucial for the success of differentiated track access 
charges.  
Beside the harmonisation of the main elements  of charging schemes, the development of a 
common classification system for wagons a nd their noise emission, of appropriate 
identification systems and registers are needed. 
As far as the identification of wagons is  concerned, appropriate systems are under 
development or in some case already implemented. They will allow identifying and tracing wagons running on the network. The costs of such  systems have been assessed in section 
5.4.3 concluding that total costs for installation a nd maintenance are in th e order of magnitude 
of some millions of euros, significantly le ss than the direct costs of retrofitting.  
Classification systems need to be  developed but this does not s eem to be to complicated as 
even simple schemes would be appropri ate if harmonised at European level. 
National vehicle register s already exist and allow the inte gration of information on noise 
emissions of wagons. At European level the Eu ropean Railway Agency currently develops a 
central register connecting the national registers. 
                                                
 
32 Written information received from Mr. P. Ferrão, CP (Portuguese Railways) 
33 Currently under development, see:  
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/state_aid/consultation_ms_en.htm 
EN 43   EN 6. C OMPARING THE OPTIONS  
Both, policy options DEV and SOV could be e ffective in achieving the objective of noise 
reduction as defined in secti on 3. 97% of the axle-km performed by silent wagons resp. all 
wagons with an annual mileage of at least 10, 000 km would be archived  at the earliest by 
2013 for policy option SOV and by 2014 for DEV ( both in the case of LL-block retrofitting). 
Table 13 summarises the costs of retrofit ting programmes, added maintenance and 
administrative costs as well as total noise reduc tion benefits in the different scenarios. All 
values are expressed in mone tary terms and are referred  to the period 2010-2024. The net 
benefits, i.e. total benefits – total added costs, are calculated. It is important to note that this 
net benefit does not take into account the incen tivation margin and some additional economic, 
environmental and social benefits, which coul d not be determined quantitatively (such as 
savings in investment costs for rolling stock and in maintenance costs for the infrastructure). 
The qualitatively assessed impacts are summarised in Table 14. 
Table 13: Overview of monetised impact s of the policy options and scenarios 
Impact  Limit 
birthdate K (2009 – 2024) K+LL (2009 – 2024) 
  SOV DEV SOV DEV  
1979 1,847 M€ 1,441 M€ 728 M€ 416 M€ Investment cost for retrofitting 
programme  1984 1,102 M€ 1,018 M€  488 M€ 214 M€ 
1979  317 M€  238 M€  406 M€ 347 M€ 
Added maintenance costs  
1984  226 M€  193 M€ 268 M€ 248 M€ 
1979 Added administrative costs for new 
tasks 1984 85 M€ 93 M€ 85 M€ 93 M€ 
1979 2,249 M€ 1,772 M€ 1,219 M€ 856 M€ 
TOTAL ADDED COST  
1984 1,413 M€ 1,304 M€  841 M€ 555 M€ 
1979 7,071 M€ 5,762 M€ 9,460 M€ 8,428 M€ Added BENEFIT on affected 
population  1984 4,133 M€ 4,385 M€ 4,450 M€ 5,208 M€ 
1979 4,822 M€ 3,990 M€ 8,241 M€ 7,572 M€ 
TOTAL NET VALUE  
1984 2,720 M€ 3,081 M€ 3,609 M€ 4,653 M€ 
Finally, the following figure shows the total bene fit/cost ratio for each scenario (K and K+LL) 
and for different wagon limit birthdates (1979 and 1984). Again, the ince ntivation margin and 
the additional benefits are not included. 
EN 44   EN 012345678910
SOV 79
(K)SOV 84
(K)DEV 79
(K)DEV 84
(K)SOV 79
(K+LL)SOV 84
(K+LL)DEV 79
(LL)DEV 84
(LL)Benefits-costs-ratio
 
Figure 15: Benefits-costs-ratios fo r the policy options and scenarios 
Table 14: Overview of impacts assessed qualitatively 
Impact K K+LL 
 SOV DEV SOV DEV 
Reduced infrastructure-related 
noise abatement programmes ++ ++ ++ ++ 
Reduced investment in new wagons 0 + 0 + 
Reduced maintenance costs for 
infrastructure + + + + 
Impact on competition within the 
rail sector - 0 0 0 
Restrictions for 3rd country wagons - 0 - 0 
Environm. impacts of modal shift  - - - 0 
Energy savings (weight reduction) + + + + 
Reduced risk of forest fires + + + + 
Reduced noise in 3rd countries + + + + 
Reduction of weight handled + + + + 
Increased transparency 0 + 0 + 
Explanation: ++: very positive impact; +: po sitive impact; 0: no significant positive or 
negative impact; -: negative imp act; --: very negative impact 
The results of the cost-benefit calculation show for all scenarios considerable net benefits. 
Furthermore, it needs to be underlined that major benefits of retr ofitting could not be 
EN 45   EN quantified and monetised such as the savings due to reduced infras tructure-related noise 
abatement programmes, reduced maintenance cost s for the rail infrastructure and efficiency 
gains in fleet management. These benefits have  the potential to be of the same order of 
magnitude as the costs of retrofitting. It can be concluded that retrofitting freight wagon with 
low-noise brake blocks can be an important measure to reduce the negative environmental 
impacts of railways and that the need fo r EU action in this field is confirmed. 
For all policy options and scenarios assessed, significant additional cost s for retrofitting can 
be expected in the range of 550 million € to 2.25 billion €. The an alysis of the cost structure 
results in following conclusions: 
• For all scenarios the investment for retrof itting is the most important cost; added 
maintenance costs amount to 13-16% of the to tal (K-blocks) and 32-45% of the total (LL-
blocks); administrative costs amount to 4-7% of  the total (K-blocks) and 7-16% of the total 
(LL-blocks);  
• Added maintenance costs constitute a significant portion of the total when retrofitting is 
considered to be done with K and LL-blocks;  
• Added administrative costs do not appear to be decisive although they refer to essential 
components of the retrofitting programme; 
Further to the assessment of costs and savings related to retrofitting it has been analysed 
which actor would bear the cost s and who would benefit from re venues or savings (see Table 
15). For both policy options railway undertakings/ wagon owners have to bear the costs directly related to retrofitting (investment and additional maintenance). However, SOV and DEV (only in case of a bonus system) foresee a reim bursement of at least pa rts of the costs. In 
case of a cost-neutral bonus-mal us-system for DEV, this would not be the case. The study 
demonstrated that this would lead to a signifi cant increase of transport costs resulting in a 
modal shift from rail to road in the order of magnitude of 0.4% of  the total rail freight demand 
(see section 5.5.2). As far as the allocation of noise abatement costs in  competing modes of 
transport is concerned, no similar measures ha ve been taken for road transport while in 
aviation noise-differentiated ai rport charges are in place at some European airports in 
accordance with national legislation. Therefore, a deviation from the polluters-pays-principle 
can be recommended as long as co mpeting modes of transport do  not bear similar cost for 
noise abatement measures. 
The impact on IMs is rather small as the bonus granted to RUs would be compensated either 
by the MS or by revenues from a malus. 
MS would provide funding for retrofitting to RU s/ WOs either directly as subsidies or 
indirectly via the compensation paid to IMs for the noise bonus. However, it is very likely that 
savings in infrastructure relate d noise abatement costs will at least outweigh these costs (see 
section 5.4.5). Overall, retrofitti ng and providing financial support c ould be cost neutral for all 
parties involved as significant savi ngs are possible (even if it has not been feasible within this 
impact assessment to quantify these savings). 
EN 46   EN Table 15: Overview of costs and re venues and which party bears them 
Cost RU/ WO IM MS 
 SOV DEV SOV DEV SOV DEV 
Investment for 
retrofitting costs costs - - - - 
Additional maintenance  costs costs - - - - 
Administrative costs costs costs costs costs costs costs 
Funding for retrofitting programmes revenues 
compensating 
investment revenues 
compensating 
investment & 
maintenance 
(only bonus 
system) - costs (only 
bonus 
system), but 
reimbursed 
by MS costs: 
subsidy to 
RU/WO costs (only 
bonus 
system): 
compensation 
to IM 
Investment for 
infrastructure-related 
noise  abatement  - - savings savings savings savings 
Investment cost for renewal of fleet savings savings - - - - 
Maintenance costs for infrastructure - - savings savings - - 
The comparison of the K-blocks and K+LL-bl ocks scenarios leads to clear results: 
• The retrofitting costs with K-bl ocks are significantly higher than with LL-blocks (by 750 
million to 1 billion € according to the scenario); 
• The gross benefits of LL-block retrofitting ar e higher than those of the related K-block 
scenario. Even if K-block retrofitting can star t earlier (due to the existing homologation of 
at least one product), in the LL-block scen arios retrofitting programmes are completed 
earlier as the retrofitting rates with LL-blocks  are much higher (brake systems do not need 
to be modified for retrofitting with LL-blocks, no problems with restricted workshop capacities); 
• Therefore, the K+LL scenarios always lead to  significantly higher ne t benefits than the 
related K-block scenario;  
• The elimination of the first year of retrofit ting with K-blocks woul d lead to a further 
increase in net benefits (see section 5.7); a rapid homologati on of LL-blocks is thus an 
important objective for the effectiven ess of the retrofitting programme; 
• It can be concluded that the use of K-bl ocks for retrofitting cannot be recommended 
provided that LL-blocks will be fully ava ilable as from 2011. Certainly, this is not 
guaranteed but this looks to be a likely scenario as by end of 2007, three products have 
received a provisional homologation and one of them successfully passed successfully all 
tests. An earlier homologation than in 2010 would create significant additional benefit. 
Therefore, the development and homologatio n of this technology sh all become highest 
priority. 
EN 47   EN Based on both, the quantitative and qualitative im pacts, the comparison of the policy options 
leads to following conclusions: 
• The “business as usual” option cannot compet e with the two other ones as these have 
positive benefits-costs-ratios and several additional positive impacts.  
• The DEV option has better benefits-costs rati os than SOV (for the K+LL-scenarios 9.9 
compared to 7.8 (1979 birthdate) resp. 9.4 to 5.3 (1984 birthdate). This is confirmed by the 
qualitative assessment where DEV shows better or equal results for all impacts considered. 
• However, it has been show n that the incentivation marg in for the DEV option will 
probably have to be higher than for the S OV option (see section 5.4.4); dividing the 
SOV/DEV total added cost values in Table 13, it can be seen that an incentivation margin 
for DEV of at the most 130% (K) or 150% (K+ LL) that for SOV would lead to equal total 
funding for the two options SOV / DEV. Theref ore, it is of high importance to limit the 
aggregated bonus for a silent wa gon to the retrofitting costs. 
Concerning the intended exclusion of older wagons  from retrofitting, two scenarios have been 
introduced with the limit birthdates 1979 and 1984. Following conclusions can be drawn: 
• Before going to the quantitative considerations it  is important to note that the values for the 
number of wagons built after 1979 / 1984 are calculated from the available age 
distributions with a procedure that does not lead to a great accuracy; furthermore it is 
unknown whether in the future these wagons w ill last longer than expected (with the 
consequence of noisy wagons running fo r a long time) or disappear quickly; 
• Assuming the figures calculated, the choice of a limit birthdate of 1984 would obviously 
lead to less costs than the choice of 1979 due to the lower number of wagons to retrofit; 
however in all scenarios and for all values assumed for affected population it can be seen 
that a reduction in net benefit ensues; it thus  can be concluded that  to retrofit the wagons 
built between 1979 and 1984 (limit birthdate 1979) leads to higher benefits than costs. 
In addition to the results aggregated and di scounted over the time, the annual costs and 
benefits have been analysed (see Figure 16 and Figure 17). 
CBA Analysis for K and 1979 scenario SOV
€ -€ 100.0€ 200.0€ 300.0€ 400.0€ 500.0€ 600.0€ 700.0€ 800.0€ 900.0€ 1,000.0
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024[mln € ]
Benefit DG Env An'06 Benefit Infras TOT Extra C os t
Mainten. Costs Adm Costs (SOV) Retrof Costs 
Figure 16: Time-dependent costs and benefits (K, 1979, SOV) 
EN 48   EN CBA Analysis for K+LL and 1979 scenario DEV
€ -€ 100,0€ 200,0€ 300,0€ 400,0€ 500,0€ 600,0€ 700,0€ 800,0€ 900,0€ 1.000,0
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024[mln € ]
Benefit DG Env An'06 Benefit I nfras TOT Extra Cost
Mainten. Costs A dm Costs ( D EV ) Retrof Costs 
Figure 17: Time-dependent costs and benefits (K+LL, 1979, DEV) 
This analysis underlines the advantages of LL-bl ocks for retrofitting as for K-blocks the costs 
occur at an early stage but benefits are de layed. For LL-blocks, the two curves are more 
aligned. Furthermore, these graphs demonstrat e a need for ongoing financial incentives to use 
low-noise wagons as long as their maintenance co sts are higher than thos e of cast-iron braked 
wagons. Only a mid-term bonus or a bonus-malus scheme on track access charges could provide these incentives.  
Furthermore, for K-block retrofitting the initi al investment is obviously of higher relative 
importance; therefore, the policy option SOV fits  better to K-block retr ofitting than DEV not 
providing the funding at the time the costs o ccur. And vice-versa: The more relevant 
additional maintenance costs of  LL-block retrofitting can be better provided by DEV with its 
continuous financial support. 
As overall result of this impact assessment,  policy option DEV consisting of differentiated 
track access charges with a noise bonus for silent wagons, noise emission ceiling and 
voluntary commitments has been identified as th e most appropriate solution to achieve the 
objectives of rail noise reduction while maintaining the competitiveness of rail freight. The main advantages of this option are the highest benefits in terms of noise reduction/ reduction 
of number of citizens a ffected by rail noise (with a benefits -costs ratio of up to 10), lower 
costs than related to the competing SOV opti on, the direct link to th e objectives of this 
initiative (to reduce noise by using silent wagons) and its easy application to wagons 
registered in different Member States or even outside the EU. 
As this policy option also has two main disadva ntages, solutions need to be elaborated for 
passing the noise bonuses to the wa gon owners/ keepers bearing the costs of retrofitting (if not 
these same entity as the ra ilway undertaking ge tting the bonus) and concerning intermediate 
measures as the implementation of differentiate d track access charges requires some time. In 
this context voluntary commitment s could play an important role  by addressing the issue of 
bonuses to be passed to wagons owners as  well as a by rapid, but co-ordinated 
implementation of differentiated track access charges by some infrastructure managers. 
The harmonisation of differentiated track access ch arges at European level is a crucial factor 
for the effectiveness of this instrument as solely national solutions would not provide the 
necessary financial incentives for retrof itting and could lead to unacceptably high 
administrative costs. 
EN 49   EN High priority needs to be given to the furthe r development and homologation of LL-blocks as 
the most economic viable technology for re trofitting. By implementing policy option DEV 
providing incentives to further reduce costs of retrofitti ng and following the positive examples 
of the United Kingdom and Portugal of cost-neura l retrofitting, it should be possible to reduce 
the additional costs of retrofitting to a minimum. 
7. M ONITORING AND EVALUATION  
With regard to the objectives of the Comm unication on rail noise abatement measures 
addressing the existing fleet, th e following indicators seem su itable to measure its progress 
and the related costs: 
(1) Total number and share of vehi cles retrofitted per country 
(2) Total silent fleet per country 
(3) Number and share of axle-k m run by low-noise wagons 
(4) Costs of retrofitting per country 
(5) Annual noise bonuses granted per infrastructure manager 
(6) Average annual maintenance cost per wagon (per country and per wagon-km) 
(7) Total average noise reduction (dB) 
(8) Noise reduction on affected population 
(9) Noise reduction at particular “hot spots” 
The noise mapping exercise in the framework of Directive 2002/49/EC should be used to 
assess the success of the retrof itting programmes: Against th e 2007 maps as baseline, the 
effectiveness of retrofitting programmes will be  monitored, the need for emission ceilings can 
be elaborated and the fine-tuni ng of ceiling values can be carried out. In this context, suitable 
data related to the indicators 7, 8 and 9 is reported by Memb er States to the Commission 
under the above mentioned Directive. 
Other data has to be repor ted by the rail sector (IM: bonus; RU/WO: wagons, costs). 
Therefore, reporting and mon itoring issues should be one element of the voluntary 
commitment of the sector to promote retrofitting. 
Improved awareness on rail noise issues and ex change of information between stakeholders, 
as encouraged by the Communication, will also c ontribute to constantly improving the actions 
undertaken. 
EN 50   EN ANNEX I: DESCRIPTION OF POLICY OPTIONS  
Possible policy options and instruments to suppor t/ promote retrofitting of the European rail 
freight fleet are listed below (s ee Table 16) and briefly describe d. Beside, a 'doing nothing/ no 
policy change' option will be used as baseline scenario.  
A combination of different instruments may be examined, as the problem is rather complex 
and rail freight and rail noise cond itions vary greatly across the EU. 
Table 16: List of policy options and instruments  
Policy option Instrument  
A: Status quo (as baseline scenario) 
B: Voluntary commitment by the rail sector 
C: Financial incentives for retrofitting 
 C1: Differentiated track access charges 
 C2: Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons 
 C3: Subsidies for retrofitting 
 C4: Loans at preferential terms 
 C5: Tax incentives 
D: Legal measures to impose retrofitting 
 D1: Noise limit values for the existing fleet  
 D2: Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons  
 D3: Noise emission ceiling 
 D4: Tradable permit system 
1. Voluntary commitment by the rail sector 
This option consists of actions paving th e way towards a voluntary commitment by the 
various stakeholders – railway undertakings, wagon owners and infrastructure managers. It is 
based on the assumption that it would be up to ra ilway associations to take over the central 
role in organising retrofitting programmes. Commitment is needed from all stakeholders as 
retrofitting involves action at different levels.  
A voluntary commitment could include such components as commitments to individual 
objectives (e.g. individual retrofitting targets), to  set up and implement appropriate retrofitting 
programmes to define priorities  in order to get the best re sults and/ or to financial 
contributions from the sector. 
2. Financial incentives for retrofitting 
To overcome the financing problem, which is th e main obstacle to retrofitting, wagon owners 
could be given financial incentives. As a rule , subsidies granted by Member States to 
economic actors should be regarded as state ai ds according to Article 87 of the EC Treaty. 
The EC Treaty generally prohibits state aid which affects competition between markets actors, unless it is justified by reasons  of general economic development. The European Commission 
is in charge of watching over compliance of stat e aid with EU competition rules to ensure that 
this prohibition is respected and that exemp tions are applied equall y across the European 
EN 51   EN Union. For this purpose, the Commission services  are preparing state aid guidelines for the 
rail sector. A draft of the guidelines ha s been made available in December 2007 for 
consultation with the Member States and stakeholder. 
Differentiated track access charges  
This instrument addresses the existing fina ncial flow between railway undertakings and 
infrastructure managers: the track access char ge. The railway undertakings would receive a 
discount on this charge if us ing low-noise rolling stock.  
At European level, Directive 2001/14/EC34 harmonises charging principles. One of these 
principles is that infrastructure charges may be set to take account of the cost of the 
environmental impact of train operations, incl uding noise. Any charge differentiation should 
in principle reflect the magnit ude of the impact on the enviro nment. As Directive 2001/14/EC 
does not allow an increase in overall revenue (unless there are simila r charges for competing 
modes of transport), two basic models of differe ntiated track access charges could be used as 
an incentive: 
– A cost-neutral, bonus-malus system; 
– A bonus system where the infrastructure mana ger receives financial compensation from 
the Member State. 
This instrument is applied in Switzerland since 2002 and will be introduced in The 
Netherlands in 2008/2009.  
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons 
Another instrument for granting financial incentiv es to railway undertakings to use low-noise 
freight wagons is subsidies from Member Stat es directly to the railway undertakings. The 
subsidy scheme could contain components simila r to a discount on track access charges.  
Article 10 of Directive 2001/14/EC lays down requirements for compensation schemes for 
unpaid environmental and other cost s. It needs to be investigat ed in detail whether a subsidy 
scheme for the use of low-noise wagons woul d fully comply with these requirements.  
Subsidies for retrofitting  
This instrument consists of introducing noi se abatement programmes with direct public 
financial support. The cost of retrofitting woul d be partly or fully reimbursed. Subsidies for 
retrofitting could be granted by Member  States or at European level. 
Several Member States already have rail noise abatement programmes in place35. However, 
they all cover infrastructure-related measures such noise barriers or insulated windows. In 
Switzerland, the federal governme nt finances the retrofitting of about 7 500 wagons owned by 
SBB and 4 000 privately owned wagons with K-blocks. Costs are estimated at EUR 125 
million. 
                                                 
34 Directive 2001/14/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 February 2001 on the 
allocation of railway infrastructure capacity and the levying of charges for the use of railway 
infrastructure and safety certification, OJ L 75, 15.03.2001, p. 29. 
35 UIC Status Report: Noise abatement on Eur opean railway infrastructure, Paris, 2007. 
EN 52   EN Loans at preferential terms 
Loans could be granted to wagon owners at pref erential conditions to promote retrofitting, in 
particular to support the initia l outlay. The level of the ince ntive strongly depends on whether 
the initial outlay is recouped. For retrofitting with K-blocks, savings on maintenance costs 
might be possible in some cases. Howeve r, full pay-back cannot be expected.  
Tax incentives 
In general, this instrument  provides mechanisms of fis cal incentives by granting tax 
allowances for operators applying more enviro nmentally friendly solutions. This instrument 
has been used to encourage the use for car em ission abatement measures in several countries. 
To support retrofitting, composite brake blocks could be excluded from VAT. 
3. Legal measures to impose retrofitting 
Beside economic incentives, legal instruments coul d be used to impose retrofitting of freight 
wagons. These instruments normally entail restri ctions on the use of "noisy" wagons. They 
can be implemented at European, national or regional level. 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet 
One approach would be to impose noise lim it values for existing freight wagons, e.g. by 
extending the scope of the Noise TSI to the existing fleet while at the same time fixing a calendar for phasing out "noisy" wagons.  
Such an instrument has been used in the aviation sector. Regulation (EC) No 925/1999
36 aims 
at reducing noise originating from aircraft. It  prohibits Member States from registering 
aircraft with poor noise performance.  
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons 
On certain sensitive lines and/ or at certain times (at night), access for noisy vehicle types or 
train formations could be restricted. Like other instruments such as access charges or emission 
ceilings, access restrictions requ ire individual vehicles to be  identified and classified 
according to their noise emissions. 
This approach has not yet been used to reduce ra il noise, but it has been  used for noise from 
aviation. Directive 2002/30/EC37 allows the operation of aircraft at airports to be restricted 
following an environmental impact assessment.  As a consequence, night flights are not 
allowed or strictly limite d at certain airports. 
Noise emission ceiling 
The noise emission ceiling limits daily average emissions at a certain location along the line. 
For example, current noise emission could be taken as a limit to prevent noise from increasing if rail freight transport grows. Under Di rective 2002/49/EC, Member  States are legally 
competent to set such limits to environmental noise.  
                                                
 
36 Council Regulation (EC) No 925/1999 of 29 Apr il 1999 on the registration and operation within the 
Community of certain types of civil subsonic jet aeroplanes, OJ L 115, 4.5.1999, p. 1. 
37 Directive 2002/30/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 March 2002 on the 
establishment of rules and procedures with regard to the introduction of noise-related operating 
restrictions at Community airports, OJ L 85, 28.3.2002, p. 40. 
EN 53   EN The noise emission ceiling leaves it to the rail sector to find optimal solutions: the railway 
undertaking may use vehicles with lower emissi ons to increase the number and/or speed of 
trains without exceeding the noise limits. Ther efore, the noise emission ceiling gives an 
incentive to use low-noise vehicles. Noise emi ssion ceilings could directly address noise 'hot 
spots' in the European network. Furthermore, in frastructure-related measures are also covered 
by this instrument leading to a holis tic approach of rail noise reduction. 
Tradable permit system 
Under a tradable permit scheme, a specific pe rmit issued by public au thorities must be 
obtained to produce emissions. A polluter w ho does not have enough permits can either 
reduce emissions or buy additional permits on the market. In theory, this minimises the cost of emission reductions. 
To apply this system to rail noise, a permit coul d be required for the us e of noisy wagons. The 
number of permits would be reduced every year  until the retrofitting target has been achieved. 
In Europe, a tradable permit system has been applied to greenhouse gas emissions from power 
plants and industrial installations since 2005
38. Extension to aeroplane emissions is currently 
under discussion. 
                                                 
38 Directive 2003/87/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 October 2003 establishing a 
scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the Community and amending Council 
Directive 96/61/EC, OJ L 275, 25.10.2003, p 32.  
EN 54   EN ANNEX II: PRE-SELECTION AND COMBINATIO N OF POLICY OPTIONS  
1. Assessment criteria 
With the aim to focus the detailed impact asse ssment on the most appr opriate options, various 
criteria are used to assess whether the policy options and instruments are suited to achieving 
the established objectives: 
• Effectiveness: Is the instrument suited to ach ieving the objective of th e retrofitting exercise 
(equipping wagons with low-noise brake blocks , giving priority to vehicles with a high 
annual mileage)? To what extent?  
• Suitability for wagons from other Member States : If measures are to be taken at national 
level, do they address foreign vehicles as well?  
• Implementation time: How long will it take befo re the instrument will deliver tangible 
benefits?  
• Impact on competitiveness of rail transport: Does the instrument create obstacles to the use 
of rail freight transport, particularly  on the main European corridors?  
• Efficiency: How high is the ratio of noise reduction to the cost of the exercise?  
• Administrative feasibility and co st: Does the instrument create an additional administrative 
burden for the rail sector and what are the related costs? 
• Consistency with the existing legal framework:  Does the instrument fit into the existing 
European and national legal framework? 
• Traceability of the results: Does the instrument  easily allow its effects and costs to be 
monitored? As far as public funds are concerned, transparency  is crucial to the scheme's 
credibility. 
• Complementary nature: Is it possible to co mbine two or more instruments without any 
negative impact on their individual effectiveness and efficiency? 
• Effectiveness for hot spots: Is the option e ffective regarding the noise reduction for the 
population effected? Retrofitting wagons do not automatically le ad to a nois e reduction as 
they have to be used where many people are exposed to high noise levels (“hot spots”). 
Does the policy option allow a differe ntiation regarding location and time? 
2. Screening and its results 
A screening of the policy options against the criteria is leading to the identification of those 
policy options that are likely to meet the ob jectives the best. They are further assessed 
regarding their environmental, economic and social impacts.  
As a result of the public consultation, the policy option D4 (tradable permits) has been 
excluded as results of the consu ltation. As the only instrument the majority of the contributors 
refused tradable noise emission permits. About  40% even strongly disagree. As this 
instrument is likely to have se rious disadvantages like a long implementation time as there is 
today no legal basis in place, high administrative costs and the missing capability to address rail noise 'hot spots', it has not been furt her assessed within the impact assessment. 
The remaining policy options have been assess ed against the criteria leading to a semi-
quantitative mark "very good", "good", "medium" , "poor" or "very poor". The results are 
documented in the following tables. 
EN 55   EN Table 17: Screening of policy options – Effectiveness 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  poor Not legally binding and no economic 
incentives, however, priority to vehicles with high mileage possible 
Differentiated track access charges (C1) medium Only indirect impact, but incentive to give 
priority to vehicles with high mileage; problem of economic advantage to be 
transferred to wagon keeper 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  medium Only indirect impact, but incentive to give 
priority to vehicles with high mileage; 
problem of economic advantage to be transferred to wagon keeper 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  very good High effectiveness due to direct impact; 
financial aid directly to keeper 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  very poor Low economic incentive 
Tax incentives (C5) very poor Low economic incentive (tax reduction only 
provides limited cost reduction) 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  very good Legal measures are in general relatively 
effective 
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2)  good Legal measures are in general relatively 
effective; potential problems with enforcement 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  good Legal measures are in general relatively 
effective; potential problems with enforcement 
 
EN 56   EN Table 18: Screening of policy options – Suitab ility for wagons from other Member States 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  good High in case of commitment at European level
Differentiated track access charges 
(C1) very good High (equal treatment of all wagons) 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise 
wagons (C2)  medium In theory high, but doubts if subsidies given 
for foreign wagons 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  poor strong doubts if subsidies given for foreign 
wagons 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  very good High (no restrictions to certain MS) 
Tax incentives (C5) very poor Low: only for RUs/ keepers paying taxes in 
the respective MS 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  very good If imposed at EU level 
Operating restrictions for noisy 
freight wagons (D2)  very good Equal treatment of all wagons 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  very good Equal treatment of all wagons 
 
Table 19: Screening of policy options – Implementation time 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  medium Potentially fast, but missing legal obligations could 
lead to delays 
Differentiated track access charges (C1)  medium Depends on bonus and st rategy of keepers, could 
accelerate retrofitting if lim ited in time, depends on 
monitoring and identification systems 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  medium Depends on amount of subs idy and strategy of keepers 
and on monitoring and identification systems, could 
accelerate retrofitting if limited in time 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  medium Depends on design of subsidy scheme and use of 
existing funds, need for legal basis, notification to the Commission required 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  medium Slow implementation could be expected, requires time 
to prepare projects, introduction of scheme needed  
Tax incentives (C5) medium Slow implementation could be expected (low 
incentive) 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  medium Time for adoption of legislation + transition period 
Operating restrictions for noisy 
freight wagons (D2)  good Faster to implement than limit values or noise 
emission ceiling 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  medium Development of scheme is rather complex and 
therefore time-consuming 
Table 20: Screening of policy options – Impact on competitiveness of rail transport 
EN 57   EN  Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  medium Ensures competitiveness, but financial 
contributions of sector would increase costs 
Differentiated track access charges (C1) good Depends on system: bonus or bonus/malus 
scheme (with compensation for IM); mileage of wagons 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  very good Depends on amount of  subsidy and mileage of 
wagons 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  very good Could be cost-neutral for sector 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  very poor Incentive is rather limited 
Tax incentives (C5) poor significant contribution of sector required 
Noise limit values for the existing 
fleet (D1)  very poor High additional costs for sector  
Operating restrictions for noisy 
freight wagons (D2)  poor High additional costs for sector, but not as 
high as for limit values as this instrument is more focussed; limits network capacity 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  medium High additional costs for sector, but flexibility 
for sector for cost-effective implementation; limits network capacity (but less than 
operating restrictions do) 
 
EN 58   EN Table 21: Screening of policy options – Efficiency 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  very good Provides incentives to sector to ensure 
efficiency (focussed retrofitting; sector's financial contribution avoids overrunning costs) 
Differentiated track access charges (C1) good Strong incentive for focussed retrofitting, but 
risk of 'overcompensation' for high 
performing wagons 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  good Strong incentive for focussed retrofitting, but 
risk of 'overcompensation' for high 
performing wagons 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  medium No incentive for focussed retrofitting in case 
of 100% funding; partly funding ensures efficiency to some extend, only reimbursement of costs occurred 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  very good Strong incentive for focussed retrofitting as 
high contribution of sector required 
Tax incentives (C5) very good Strong incentive for focussed retrofitting as 
high contribution of sector required 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  medium Requires retrofitting of whole fleet (very in-
efficient; only if no transition period 
foreseen), but scrapping/ replacement of old 
wagons can be expected; high incentive for sector to limit costs 
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2)  medium Requires retrofitting of significant parts of the 
fleet (expected to be in-efficient), but scrapping/ replacement of old wagons can be expected; high incentive for sector to limit 
costs 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  very good Leaves freedom to sector to optimise 
composition of fleet 
 
EN 59   EN Table 22: Screening of policy options – Administrative feasibility and cost 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  very good No bureaucracy to be expected; however, 
agreement and monitoring scheme required 
Differentiated track access charges (C1) medium Additional burdens due to more complex 
track access charging scheme (likely to be calculated based on single wagons and not on full trains as today); however, existing 
financial flow can be addressed 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  very poor Funding schemes with interface to data on 
track access charges/ train composition 
required; new financial flow from state to keeper: more complex than C1 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  good Funding schemes in-line with state aid 
provisions required; transparency of costs/ reporting system needed 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  medium Design of appropriate projects required 
Tax incentives (C5) very good VAT reduction for composite brake blocks 
without significant administrative burden possible 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  medium Implementation of concept of 'in-use-
compliance' required; medium administrative 
burden if no tests required to demonstrate 
compliance 
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2)  medium Requires more complex train paths 
management; difficult enforcement 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  medium Complex calculations for each line, 
complicated train paths management; measurements required? difficult enforcement; however, automated systems could reduce the burden significantly 
 
EN 60   EN Table 23: Screening of policy options – Cons istency with the existing legal framework 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  very good No legal basis needed 
Differentiated track access 
charges (C1)  very good Explicitly foreseen in  Article 7 (5) of Directive 
2001/14/EC 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  medium Could be based on Article 10 of Directive 
2001/14/EC; national legal basis to be put in place; compliance with state aid rules to be ensured 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  medium National legal basis to be put in place; compliance 
with state aid rules to be ensured 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  very good No legal basis needed 
Tax incentives (C5) medium National legal basis to be put in place 
Noise limit values for the existing 
fleet (D1)  poor Implementation of concept of 'in-use-compliance' 
required which is today not foreseen in the legal interoperability framework  
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2)  medium Could be based on Article 8 of Directive 
2002/49/EC; national legal basis to be put in place 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  medium Could be based on Article 8 of Directive 
2002/49/EC; national legal basis to be put in place 
 
Table 24: Screening of policy options – Traceability of the results 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  good Monitoring could be part of commitment 
Differentiated track access 
charges (C1)  good Track access charges revenues are in principle 
publicly available; noise reduction effect can be 
calculated on this basis 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  very good Subsidies need to be published; noise reduction 
effect can be calculated on this basis 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  very good Subsidies need to be published; noise reduction 
effect can be calculated on this basis 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  good EIB loans are in principle published; noise 
reduction effect can be calculated on this basis 
Tax incentives (C5) very good Tax revenu es are published; noise reduction effect 
can be calculated on this basis 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  medium Noise reduction effect can be calculated; no 
information on financial impact available  
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2)  medium Noise reduction effect can be calculated; no 
information on financial impact available 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  medium Noise reduction effect can be calculated; no 
information on financial impact available 
 
EN 61   EN Table 25: Screening of policy options – Complementary nature 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  very good Fits well to other optio ns (less to legal instruments) 
Differentiated track access 
charges (C1)  good Fits to voluntary and legal instruments, not to 
subsidies and tradable permits  
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  poor Fits to voluntary and some legal instruments, not to 
other financial instruments 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  poor Fits to voluntary and some legal instruments, not to 
other financial instruments 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  good Fits to voluntary and legal instruments, not to 
subsidies 
Tax incentives (C5) good Fits to voluntary and legal instruments, not to 
subsidies 
Noise limit values for the existing fleet (D1)  medium Fits to some financial instruments, less to other 
legal instruments and voluntary commitments (depends on transition period foreseen) 
Operating restrictions for noisy freight wagons (D2)  medium Fits to some financial instruments, less to other 
legal instruments and voluntary commitments 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  medium Fits to some financial instruments, less to other 
legal instruments and voluntary commitments 
 
Table 26: Screening of policy optio ns – Effectiveness for hot spots 
 Evaluation Comments 
Voluntary commitment (B)  very good A commitment could focus on certain lines or 
corridors 
Differentiated track access charges (C1)  good Bonus for certain lines or corridors possible, but 
adds more complexity to the schemes 
Subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons (C2)  good Bonus for certain lines or corridors possible, but 
adds more complexity to the schemes 
Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)  poor No direct link to hot spots; however, wagons used 
on certain corridors could be given priority 
Loans at preferential terms (C4)  poor No direct link to hot spots; however, wagons used 
on certain corridors could be given priority 
Tax incentives (C5) very poor No link to  hot spots, low general effectiveness 
Noise limit values for the existing 
fleet (D1)  poor No direct link to hot spots  
Operating restrictions for noisy 
freight wagons (D2)  very good Restrictions could explicitly focus on hot spots 
Noise emission ceiling (D3)  good Ceilings could cover hot spots 
 
EN 62   EN The summary of results of the screening of the policy options are presented in Table 27 
(policy options C1 – C5) and 
EN 63   EN Table 28 (policy options B, D1 – D3). 
Table 27: Screening assessment of policy options providing fina ncial incentives 
 Differentiated 
track access charges (C1) Subsidies for 
use of low-noise wagons 
(C2) Subsidies for 
retrofitting (C3) Loans at 
preferential terms (C4) Tax 
incentives (C5) 
Effectiveness medium medium good very poor very poor 
Suitability foreign wagons very good medium poor very good very poor 
Implementation 
time medium medium very good medium medium 
Competitiveness 
of rail good very good very good very poor poor 
Efficiency good good medium very good very good 
Administrative 
feasibility medium very poor good medium very good 
Legal consistency  very good me dium medium very good medium 
Traceability of 
the results good very good very good good very good 
Complementary 
nature good poor poor good good 
Effectiveness for 
hot spots good good poor poor very poor 
Overall good  medium  good  poor*  poor*  
*: very poor effectiveness leading to redu ction by one rank in the aggregated result 
EN 64   EN Table 28: Screening assessment of lega l measures and voluntary commitments 
 Noise limits for 
existing fleet (D1)Operating 
restrictions (D2) Noise emission 
ceiling (D3) Voluntary 
commitments (B) 
Effectiveness very good  good good poor 
Suitability foreign wagons very good very good very good good 
Implementation 
time medium good medium medium 
Competitiveness 
of rail very poor poor medium medium 
Efficiency medium medium very good very good 
Administrative 
feasibility medium medium poor very good 
Legal consistency  poor me dium medium very good 
Traceability of the 
results medium medium medium good 
Complementary 
nature medium medium medium very good 
Effectiveness for 
hot spots poor very good good good 
Overall medium  good  good  good  
As a first approach all "good" ra ted policy options are selected fo r further assessment. This is 
confirmed by the following more detailed evaluation: 
• Policy option B, a voluntary commitment by the s ector, receives a high mark as it offers 
various advantages regarding the efficiency, administrative burdens, legal consistency and 
complementary nature. However, following th e experience with the UIC/CER/UIP action 
programme39 and due to its poor effec tiveness it cannot be regard ed as appropriate stand-
alone measure.  
• The "Differentiated track access charges" an d the "Subsidies for the use of low-noise 
wagons" (C1 resp. C2) follow the same principl e idea to grant financial incentives for the 
use of silent wagons, but C2 requires the esta blishment of new financ ial flows between two 
actors (Member State authorities and RU resp. WO). This leads to significant 
disadvantages such as high additional admini strative burdens and a limited suitability for 
foreign wagons. As the advantages are rather  limited, differentiated track access charges 
will be dealt with in the detailed analyses whereas the subsidies for the use of low-noise wagons are excluded. 
• Subsidies for retrofitting (C3) have on th e one hand clear disadvantages like problems 
regarding foreign wagons and the low effectiven ess to address noise "hot spots". However, 
as there are many strong points like the very hi gh effectiveness and concerning the impacts 
                                                
 
39 In 1998 UIC, CER and UIP proposed the ‘Action Programme Noise Reduction Freight Traffic’ which 
aims to retrofit the European freight fleet in use during the next decade. The programme, however, has 
never started due to technical problems at the beginning and most importantly due to lack of funding. 
EN 65   EN on railways' competitiveness, this policy option has been selected for the detailed 
assessment. This selection is in line with the re sults of the public consultation and the 
stakeholder workshop where policy options C1 and C3 have been in the focus of the 
discussions. 
• The policy options C4 (Loans at  preferential terms) and C5 (Tax incentives) are expected 
to have a very poor effectiven ess as they provide very limite d financial incentives for RUs 
to retrofit. In case of implementation of retrofitting programmes at large scale, this instruments would require major financial inte rventions from industr y and would therefore 
result in high financial burdens for the sector, leading to an increase of transport prices and 
potentially to a modal shift towards road tr ansport (higher envir onmental burden including 
noise). As other options do provide necessary incentives, C4 and C5 are not further dealt 
with in the detailed impact assessment. 
• Compared to the other legal instruments, noi se limits for existing fleet (D1) have been 
assessed as the most effective policy options of this group. However, the use of this 
instrument would be a serious threat for ra il freight as high costs for the sector would 
reduce its competitiveness. Furthermore, D1 doe s not comply with today's legal framework 
for interoperability that does not foresee the instrument of compliance for rolling stock 
already in use (unless it gets upgraded or renewed). Therefore, as there are no other 
significant advantages compared to the other two legal instruments, noise limits for the existing fleet are excluded from th e detailed impact assessment. 
• The policy options D2 and D3 (Operating rest rictions and Noise emission ceiling) offer 
various advantages (such as high effectiveness,  in particular for hot spots) with limited 
disadvantages at the downside. As the direct comparison does not lead to a clear ranking, 
both options are selected for the detailed analyses. 
As result of this evaluation, the preliminary fi nding of the screening can be confirmed. Policy 
options B, C1, C3, D2 and D3 will be furt her dealt with in the impact assessment. 
3. Combinations of policy options 
The remaining policy options have been ch ecked regarding possible combinations as 
according to the results of the public consultation, no single instrument is regarded as 
sufficient to achieve the objectives. Moreover, it has to be considered that it is quite unlikely 
that a single solution could be suitab le, effective and successful, because: 
• legal options not combined with financial ince ntives would result in  excessive burden on 
the rail sector, for the same reasons which le d to the exclusion of policy option D1 (see 
chapter 0); 
• financial incentives not combined with le gal measures could not guarantee alone a high 
retrofitting rate due to a lack of obligatory nature of these in strument. In particular at long 
term, accompanying legal measures could en sure the effectiveness of retrofitting 
programmes. 
A voluntary commitment by the sector is strongly recommendable in any future scenario; it is 
considered as a part of all policy options asse ssed. As stand-alone measures it strongly lacks 
effectiveness (see A nnex II, section 2). 
The possible combinations of legal and economi c instruments have been further analysed 
regarding complementarity aspects an d possible synergies (see Table 29): 
EN 66   EN • The two selected financial in struments (differentiated track  access charges and subsidies 
for retrofitting) are difficult to combine. A possible double funding an d/or a distortion of 
competition are two main concerns. The competition issue becomes relevant in case of different funding schemes in Member States. A successive use of both instruments might 
be acceptable, in particular as subsidies necessa rily have a transient character (until the end 
of the retrofitting programmes); however, further reflections are needed on this issue. 
• The combination of the two selected legal m easures (operating restrictions and emission 
ceiling) is possible and potenti ally advantageous. Simultaneous  application of different 
instruments could distinguish among lines. Th e application at different times is also 
possible. However, the implementation of such a combination would be extremely 
complex to design and would be related to a high risk of non-optimal solutions. 
Furthermore, the high burden for the sector due to missing financial support clearly led to 
the exclusion of this combination. 
• In case of a combination of differentiated track access charges and operating restrictions 
(C1 and D2), the added value would be rather limited as the track access charges do not have a significant weak point that need s to be compensated. However, operating 
restrictions could help to increase the eff ectiveness of track access charges as RUs/ WOs 
would have more incentives for retrofitting than in case of a stand-alone policy option. 
Overall the degree of complementarity of this  combination can be regarded as medium. 
• These considerations also apply for differe ntiated track access charges combined with 
noise emission ceilings (C1 and D3). In addition, synergy eff ects could be used as both 
instruments require the implementation of m onitoring systems to identify silent/ noisy 
wagons. Therefore, the administrative costs pe r individual policy op tion could be reduced. 
As consequence, this combination has a highe r degree of complementarity as "C1 + D2". 
• In case of a combination of subsidies for re trofitting and operating restrictions (C3 and 
D2), the complementarity would be high as the effectiveness to address hot spots would be 
higher compared to subsidies as single inst rument. In addition, negative economic impact 
on the rail sector caused by the introducti on of operating restrictions would be 
compensated by the subsidies. Overall, the degree of complementarity of this combination can be regarded as high. 
• For the combination of subsidies for retrofitt ing and noise emission ceilings (C3 and D3), 
some complementary effects can be expected, in particular regardi ng the suitability for 
foreign wagons which would be covered by the ceiling. Other positive effects deriving 
from the combination of both policy options ar e more limited than for the combination "C3 
+ D2" (e.g. emission ceilings have  a less direct impact on ho t spots and compensate the 
disadvantage of subsidies in this regard to a lower degree than opera ting restrictions do). 
Therefore, the overall level of complementarity of this combination is regarded as medium. 
EN 67   EN Table 29: Summary of the possible combina tions of the selected policy options  
  
Differentiated 
track access 
charges 
Subsidies for 
retrofitting 
Operating 
restriction  
Noise 
emission 
ceiling 
Differentiated track access charges (C1)  Low Med. High Financial 
incentives Subsidies for retrofitting (C3)   High Med. 
Operating restriction for noisy wagons (D2)   Low Legal 
measures Noise emission ceiling (D3)    
As the combined measures are regarded as supe rior to the single policy options, the detailed 
impact assessment will focus on the two following combinations: 
– "SOV": Subsidies for retrofitting, Operating restrictions and Voluntary 
commitment (C3 + D2 + B); 
– "DEV": Differentiated track access charges, Emission ceiling and Voluntary 
commitment (C1 + D3 + B). 
EN 68   EN ANNEX III:  IDENTIFICATION OF IMPACTS  
In accordance with the Commission guidelines for impact assessment the economic, 
environmental and social impacts are systematically compiled in the following tables. 
Table 30: Identified economic impacts 
Impact on Description Type of 
assessment 
Competition in the internal market Investment cost for the retrofitting programme  depending 
mainly on the number of types and number of wagons of each type.  Quantitative 
Operating costs and 
conduct of business  Added wagon maintenance costs.  Different wheel and brake 
block wear-rates will generate di fferent maintenance costs per 
wagon-km mainly depending on wa gon characteristics, type of 
operation, type of brake blocks.  Quantitative  
Administrative 
costs on businesses Added administrative costs for new tasks . Administrative 
costs will increase or arise for some MS or IM for the implementation of the monitoring system to identify silent and/ or noisy wagons (differentiated track access charges, emission ceiling, enforcement of operating restrictions); 
Costs will be incurred to maintain and manage such a system.  Quantitative 
Public authorities Funding for the retrofitting programme  by MS to provide the 
necessary financial incentives for RUs and WOs. Quantitative 
Public authorities Reduced investment for infrastructure-related noise 
abatement programme: Retrofitting could lead to a reduction 
of future noise abatement progra mmes today financed by public 
authorities and usually implemented by IM. However, the reduction is difficult to quantify as the programmes are based on political decisions.  Qualitative 
Competition in the 
internal market Reduced investment cost for renewal of fleet:  The current 
development towards higher performance of freight wagons 
(annual mileage resp. tkm) could be  stimulated by differentiated 
track access charges by giving preference to using the available silent wagons. This could lead to savings due reduced annual 
investments in new wagons. Qualitative 
Competition in the 
internal market Competition within the rail sector : Costs and subsidies for 
retrofitting might not be equally distributed among the RUs. Competitive advantages/ disadvantages for some market player 
could be a result. Qualitative 
Operating costs and 
conduct of business Reduced maintenance costs for infrastructure: Retrofitting 
would lead to a reduction of da mages of rail caused by wheel 
defect. Savings for IM can be expected.  Qualitative 
Third countries and 
international relations Influence of restrictions for noisy wagons on non-EU 
countries . The degree of restriction has the potential to affect 
cross-border trade with non-EU countries. Qualitative 
 
EN 69   EN Table 31: Identified environmental impacts 
Impact on Description Type of 
assessment 
Noise emission  Reduction of sound pressure levels.  These positive effects 
derive from the increase of the fraction of low-noise wagons respect to the total fleet and from the mileage run by these 
wagons.  Quantitative  
Mobility (transport 
modes) and the use 
of energy Influence on the modal split between rail and road 
(environmental effects).  The possible modal shift from rail to 
road could cause a high increase in transport externalities.  Qualitative 
Mobility and the 
use of energy  Traction energy saving due to reduced weight of brake 
blocks:  Composite brake blocks are lighter than cast iron ones. 
This leads to a reduced net weight of freight wagons resulting in savings in energy consumption.  Quantitative  
The likelihood or 
scale of environmental risks Reduced risk of forest fires:  Retrofitting reduces the likelihood 
of fire breaking out due to sparks from the block-tyre interface.  Qualitative 
 
Table 32: Identified social impacts 
Impact on Description Type of 
assessment 
Public health and safety  Benefits in terms of noise reduction, population affected by 
freight rail noise and consequent health effects : reduction of 
sound pressure levels to which affected population is exposed 
(reduction of affected population by railway noise over 55 dB). Quantitative  
Standards and 
rights related to job 
quality Reduction of weight handled  by wagon maintenance workers 
due to lighter blocks could lead to improved working conditions 
and reduced risks of health problems.  Qualitative 
Governance, 
participation, good administration, access to justice, media and ethics  Increased transparency  due to publication of data on noise 
exposure.  Qualitative  
Public health and 
safety Social impact in 3rd countries : Reduction of number of people 
affected by rail noise to be expected in non-EU countries Qualitative