Environmental monitoring of an urban railway.

The environmental impact of a rail infrastructure during its operating is often very strong, especially in urban environments where the structure of land is more complex. The present paper deals with the use of the environmental monitoring as a control tool able to act on the significant parameters linked to environmental impacts. By means of a set of standardised monitoring activities, to be carried out on the basis of space and time representing criteria, can be followed the development of the parameters during the whole life of the infrastructure and the results can be compared with the wished standards. The following monitoring activities have been planned with reference only to the selected primary factors, acting directly on the environment, to which is possible to report the impacts of every other derived impacts factor. The effectiveness of a monitoring depends on the possibility to relate directly the values of the parameters with the measure to be adopted in order to modify these values. The present paper deals in particular with the noise and vibration impact caused by an urban section of the new Roma- Napoli railway.