The room acoustical design in high-speed trains for speech privacy

Abstract

The acoustic environments of rooms on two high-speed trains were investigated to identify design elements that could improve acoustic comfort, with consideration of noise disturbance and speech privacy. A questionnaire survey was distributed to train passengers to determine if respondents were annoyed by other people's noise. Acoustic measurements, adapted from methodology originally used in an open plan office, were also conducted to evaluate speech privacy on the train. These measurements, which employed a speech source, were made at different positions within the passenger cars to evaluate speech privacy. Results showed that the speech levels in the trains' passenger cars were easy to hear and could act as an annoyance to the passengers.