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I’m really excited about this. I live in the NYC area and I think noise pollution from vehicles is an under-appreciated problem. I think the worst impact from s

I’m really excited about this. I live in the NYC area and I think noise pollution from vehicles is an under-appreciated problem. I think the worst impact from street noise is on sleep; even a bit of noise noticeably hurts my sleep quality.

bogomipz 4y ago
I think it equally affects quality of life during non-sleep hours though as well. The incessant horn honking, blaring music and the straight pipe folks actually make walking down the street unpleasant. The sad thing with the horn honking is that the people in the others cars that they're honking at have their windows up, air conditioning and stereo on. They likely can't hear it enough to be bothered by it. The people that pay price are the walking pedestrians i.e they very people who are not contributing to the very traffic problem these people are stressed about. What's the point in a walking city when the walking has been ruined by people in cars.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pain2022 4y ago
  Well said, this always bothered me
- withinboredom 4y ago
  That’s what I love about living in the Netherlands. Walking around isn’t ruined by cars because there aren’t any cars allowed in most of the city. If you want to go somewhere in the city, you walk or bike. I walk pretty much everywhere within 2-5km and bike or drive beyond that. It’s usually a pleasant walk, especially this time of year with the flowers blooming. When visiting the states, I’ve often found it dangerous to walk anywhere. Even just half a mile to the grocery store will involve walking on some high speed road with barely a sidewalk, half-abandoned acres of parking lots, and people driving who have zero respect for people walking.
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    What city are you in? I feel like I still see cars in the city but yes I agree it's much so less of a concern in the NL. Did you move there from a car-centric place?
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      I live in Utrecht. I moved from the US where it was required to drive 500m just to go to the store because walking there would be suicide. There are cars here, for sure. But it is nothing like the US.
      - bogomipz 4y ago
        I see. Can I ask you how you went about relocating? Did you have a job lined up first or did you just decide you liked that city and figured it out after moving? Any advice?
        withinboredom 4y ago
        My wife and I visited for a couple of weeks to visit some old friends we'd met at a music festival some years before. We went back to the US for a year and figured it out. If you are a citizen of Japan or the USA, check out the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. Especially if you're already doing freelance work.
        akgerber 4y ago
        If you are not aware of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, note that it makes it pretty straightforward for an American to get a visa in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT
        bogomipz 4y ago
        Thanks, do you know if you need to have existing freelance contracts before hand? I've looked at a couple of sites that discuss DAFT but it is not clear.
Scoundreller 4y ago
Toronto did a big report on expanding its island airport to accommodate Cseries jets (currently can only handle q400 turboprops max). The noise study found the loudest noises were loud cars/motorcycles which were quieter than the jet’s predicted noise. Of course the city did nothing with that finding about vehicles.
- ShroudedNight 4y ago
  Do you have a link to the study? My understanding from the material I saw at the time was that the C-Series jets were quieter than the Q-400s, and the 'real' objection was having any airport on the island at all.
  - paulgb 4y ago
    IIRC some lake users (especially sailors and paddlers) had “real” objections to it on the basis that it would create less usable lake easily accessible from downtown. Granted, it's a much smaller group than would benefit from the airport. (I count myself in that group, but I was mildly pro-expansion on the basis of having less reasons to go to Pearson.)
    - tekknik 4y ago
      So we just have hearsay? Having worked around jets, and having been into performance cars, this sounds ridiculous. A jet engine clocks in at around 160dB. A typical performance exhaust system is less, 100-120dB. Someone should produce this report as it sounds fake.
      - Scoundreller 4y ago
        Pg. 16: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porter-cs100-aircraft-noise-assessment.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte... It was a study of impact on the nearest-by populated area (queens quay), so motor vehicles are a lot closer than the aircraft: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porter-cs100-aircraft-noise-assessment.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte... Nobody cares about noise at the airport itself.
cowmoo728 4y ago
There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that persistent noise pollution leads to cardiovascular disease. One example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00532-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00532-5
- ehnto 4y ago
  Living it, I am not at all surprised. It has grossly elevated my baseline feeling of stress.
- Emma_Goldman 4y ago
  This makes wonder. I recently moved to the middle of a loud city, so I bought a pair or bose sleepbuds that drown everything out by playing background noise while I sleep - the sound of waves, actually. Is this low-level sound any less of a stressor than traffic, though? It's constant and calming so I fall asleep. But maybe it's not good for me, and leads to lower quality sleep anyway.
  - greenhorn123 4y ago
    Can it be timed to cut off the sound after some pre-set time has passed?
    - Emma_Goldman 4y ago
      It can, and it's a good point. But I get up at 7:30, and the hour before that can be noisy. Really, in a city, the last tranche of people go to bed at 2am, the first tranche rises at 6am. That's only four hours of quiet unfortunately, and even that can be interrupted. In the future I will prioritise quiet when picking somewhere to live. I'm just a light sleeper and it kind of sucks. In evolutionary terms, it's heavily maladapted to city life.
      - greenhorn123 4y ago
        I totally overlooked how busy one 'quiet' road is because I viewed my current house on a Sunday. Big disappointment, nice garden but effectively it is unusable. Much good luck on your quest for quiet! I really sympathize.
mdoms 4y ago
oceanghost 4y ago
I lived for a few years in "Orange, California". Every night around 11pm the loudest motorcycle you could imagine would come by. I could handle the noise, but when the wife and I had a kiddo who was a light sleeper-- our lives were hell for a 18 months or so. Imagine, having a newborn and a motorcycle drive by emitting 110db of noise against her windows 5 nights a week, for a year. If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy."
- bowsamic 4y ago
  > If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy." Is this a joke? I know it seems like it’s obviously a joke, but I often see Americans say things like this with total sincerity, so I feel like I should check
  - Aurelius3 4y ago
    Possible reference to this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZvNHBdpxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZvNHBdpxE
  - paganel 4y ago
    Not the OP, but noise-induced stress situations can make you feel and believe in really nasty things in that particular moment, things that otherwise one would hold as being very bad. For example I often think of throwing some tomatoes or potatoes on the heads of the motorcycle guys who are doing their thing at 12 at night just in front of our block of apartments when summer comes (I live on the 8th floor). I know that that is illegal and that, most probably, doing that gesture could cause bodily harm to those motorcycle riders, but given the situation (lots and lots of noise that invades my personal space) that's the only thing that I can honestly think of at that particular moment. I'm European, btw, and we live in Bucharest close to one of the busiest and nosiest intersections in this city (and, I dare say, on this continent, as Bucharest is one of most traffic congested cities in Europe).
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      > in that particular moment It is no longer “that particular moment”
Emma_Goldman 4y ago
I thought about this recently. I'm occasionally woken up by souped-up cars in the early hours of the morning. You can hear them from maybe from a mile away. They must wake up hundreds, even thousands of people on late night joyrides. It's incredible that it's legal. Why allow something which is entirely pointless to cause such mass public nuisance?
- godmode2019 4y ago
  What about police helicopters, which are out every night for hours at a time. They are very very loud and will wake you up from even a deep sleep.
  - Emma_Goldman 4y ago
    I've never heard a police helicopter at night in the country where I live (UK). I rarely see or hear them at all. Edit: After googling, it looks like there are about 2000 police helicopters in the US, but only 20 in the UK. As far as I can tell, there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK.
    - godmode2019 4y ago
      Pretty common in my country [Oceania], it stays out all night only going back for fuel so they supervise any calls they get, as it's already out.
    - trumpablehump 4y ago
      The US is about 40 times bigger than the UK, according to Wolfram Alpha.
      - pjerem 4y ago
        "there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK"
      - Emma_Goldman 4y ago
johnebgd 4y ago
I’m in NYC as well. I hate the noise from the Motocross dirt bikes and atvs that folks ride around on streets speeding and doing tricks on in the city. It used to be a problem primarily in midtown but it’s spread since they started cracking down on them. I hope this new tech helps limit those groups.
- Dwolb 4y ago
  Chicago currently has this problem [1]. Summers bring out crowds of very loud motorcycles that are so large they block intersections for minutes at a time. Other smaller groups of motorcycles perform tricks or go very fast (like, don’t see them coming and suddenly they’re 100m ahead fast) on Lakeshore Drive. Of small note, there’s drag racing that occurs late at night on Lower Wacker. I guess all these groups are having fun but as a pedestrian and driver it feels dangerous and unnecessarily loud. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/otohi5/motorcycles_on_lake_shore_drive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/otohi5/motorcycles...
DrBazza 4y ago
Isn't part of the problem in NYC the sheer number of hard surfaces reflecting sound, i.e. skyscrapers?
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Well the buildings are there and will continue to be. Foliage and other dampening would obviously be welcome, but insofar as it’s smart to target easily solvable portions of a problem before the hard/impossible to solve portions, no the buildings are not really relevant.
beeboop 4y ago
Posting this because it increased my quality of sleep (life) a lot: wax earplugs. Regular earplugs are uncomfortable as hell and really hard to sleep in. The wax ones are perfectly comfortable and work better. I had to start using earplugs when I met my now-wife because she snores quite a bit. The wax ones were a life saver after a year of really uncomfortable regular ones. I recommend the mighty plug brand (I have no affiliation)

bogomipz 4y ago

I think it equally affects quality of life during non-sleep hours though as well. The incessant horn honking, blaring music and the straight pipe folks actually make walking down the street unpleasant. The sad thing with the horn honking is that the people in the others cars that they're honking at have their windows up, air conditioning and stereo on. They likely can't hear it enough to be bothered by it. The people that pay price are the walking pedestrians i.e they very people who are not contributing to the very traffic problem these people are stressed about. What's the point in a walking city when the walking has been ruined by people in cars.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pain2022 4y ago
Well said, this always bothered me
withinboredom 4y ago
That’s what I love about living in the Netherlands. Walking around isn’t ruined by cars because there aren’t any cars allowed in most of the city. If you want to go somewhere in the city, you walk or bike. I walk pretty much everywhere within 2-5km and bike or drive beyond that. It’s usually a pleasant walk, especially this time of year with the flowers blooming. When visiting the states, I’ve often found it dangerous to walk anywhere. Even just half a mile to the grocery store will involve walking on some high speed road with barely a sidewalk, half-abandoned acres of parking lots, and people driving who have zero respect for people walking.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  What city are you in? I feel like I still see cars in the city but yes I agree it's much so less of a concern in the NL. Did you move there from a car-centric place?
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    I live in Utrecht. I moved from the US where it was required to drive 500m just to go to the store because walking there would be suicide. There are cars here, for sure. But it is nothing like the US.
    - bogomipz 4y ago
      I see. Can I ask you how you went about relocating? Did you have a job lined up first or did you just decide you liked that city and figured it out after moving? Any advice?
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        My wife and I visited for a couple of weeks to visit some old friends we'd met at a music festival some years before. We went back to the US for a year and figured it out. If you are a citizen of Japan or the USA, check out the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. Especially if you're already doing freelance work.
      - akgerber 4y ago
        If you are not aware of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, note that it makes it pretty straightforward for an American to get a visa in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT
        bogomipz 4y ago
        Thanks, do you know if you need to have existing freelance contracts before hand? I've looked at a couple of sites that discuss DAFT but it is not clear.

Scoundreller 4y ago

Toronto did a big report on expanding its island airport to accommodate Cseries jets (currently can only handle q400 turboprops max). The noise study found the loudest noises were loud cars/motorcycles which were quieter than the jet’s predicted noise. Of course the city did nothing with that finding about vehicles.

ShroudedNight 4y ago
Do you have a link to the study? My understanding from the material I saw at the time was that the C-Series jets were quieter than the Q-400s, and the 'real' objection was having any airport on the island at all.
- paulgb 4y ago
  IIRC some lake users (especially sailors and paddlers) had “real” objections to it on the basis that it would create less usable lake easily accessible from downtown. Granted, it's a much smaller group than would benefit from the airport. (I count myself in that group, but I was mildly pro-expansion on the basis of having less reasons to go to Pearson.)
  - tekknik 4y ago
    So we just have hearsay? Having worked around jets, and having been into performance cars, this sounds ridiculous. A jet engine clocks in at around 160dB. A typical performance exhaust system is less, 100-120dB. Someone should produce this report as it sounds fake.
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Pg. 16: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porter-cs100-aircraft-noise-assessment.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte... It was a study of impact on the nearest-by populated area (queens quay), so motor vehicles are a lot closer than the aircraft: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porter-cs100-aircraft-noise-assessment.pdf https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9936-porte... Nobody cares about noise at the airport itself.

cowmoo728 4y ago

There's a growing body of evidence to suggest that persistent noise pollution leads to cardiovascular disease. One example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00532-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-021-00532-5

ehnto 4y ago
Living it, I am not at all surprised. It has grossly elevated my baseline feeling of stress.
Emma_Goldman 4y ago
This makes wonder. I recently moved to the middle of a loud city, so I bought a pair or bose sleepbuds that drown everything out by playing background noise while I sleep - the sound of waves, actually. Is this low-level sound any less of a stressor than traffic, though? It's constant and calming so I fall asleep. But maybe it's not good for me, and leads to lower quality sleep anyway.
- greenhorn123 4y ago
  Can it be timed to cut off the sound after some pre-set time has passed?
  - Emma_Goldman 4y ago
    It can, and it's a good point. But I get up at 7:30, and the hour before that can be noisy. Really, in a city, the last tranche of people go to bed at 2am, the first tranche rises at 6am. That's only four hours of quiet unfortunately, and even that can be interrupted. In the future I will prioritise quiet when picking somewhere to live. I'm just a light sleeper and it kind of sucks. In evolutionary terms, it's heavily maladapted to city life.
    - greenhorn123 4y ago
      I totally overlooked how busy one 'quiet' road is because I viewed my current house on a Sunday. Big disappointment, nice garden but effectively it is unusable. Much good luck on your quest for quiet! I really sympathize.

mdoms 4y ago

oceanghost 4y ago

I lived for a few years in "Orange, California". Every night around 11pm the loudest motorcycle you could imagine would come by. I could handle the noise, but when the wife and I had a kiddo who was a light sleeper-- our lives were hell for a 18 months or so. Imagine, having a newborn and a motorcycle drive by emitting 110db of noise against her windows 5 nights a week, for a year. If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy."

bowsamic 4y ago
> If I had murdered this person I would have been, "the bad guy." Is this a joke? I know it seems like it’s obviously a joke, but I often see Americans say things like this with total sincerity, so I feel like I should check
- Aurelius3 4y ago
  Possible reference to this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZvNHBdpxE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZvNHBdpxE
- paganel 4y ago
  Not the OP, but noise-induced stress situations can make you feel and believe in really nasty things in that particular moment, things that otherwise one would hold as being very bad. For example I often think of throwing some tomatoes or potatoes on the heads of the motorcycle guys who are doing their thing at 12 at night just in front of our block of apartments when summer comes (I live on the 8th floor). I know that that is illegal and that, most probably, doing that gesture could cause bodily harm to those motorcycle riders, but given the situation (lots and lots of noise that invades my personal space) that's the only thing that I can honestly think of at that particular moment. I'm European, btw, and we live in Bucharest close to one of the busiest and nosiest intersections in this city (and, I dare say, on this continent, as Bucharest is one of most traffic congested cities in Europe).
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    > in that particular moment It is no longer “that particular moment”

Emma_Goldman 4y ago

I thought about this recently. I'm occasionally woken up by souped-up cars in the early hours of the morning. You can hear them from maybe from a mile away. They must wake up hundreds, even thousands of people on late night joyrides. It's incredible that it's legal. Why allow something which is entirely pointless to cause such mass public nuisance?

godmode2019 4y ago
What about police helicopters, which are out every night for hours at a time. They are very very loud and will wake you up from even a deep sleep.
- Emma_Goldman 4y ago
  I've never heard a police helicopter at night in the country where I live (UK). I rarely see or hear them at all. Edit: After googling, it looks like there are about 2000 police helicopters in the US, but only 20 in the UK. As far as I can tell, there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK.
  - godmode2019 4y ago
    Pretty common in my country [Oceania], it stays out all night only going back for fuel so they supervise any calls they get, as it's already out.
  - trumpablehump 4y ago
    The US is about 40 times bigger than the UK, according to Wolfram Alpha.
    - pjerem 4y ago
      "there are the same number of police helicopters in LA as across the whole of the UK"
    - Emma_Goldman 4y ago

johnebgd 4y ago

I’m in NYC as well. I hate the noise from the Motocross dirt bikes and atvs that folks ride around on streets speeding and doing tricks on in the city. It used to be a problem primarily in midtown but it’s spread since they started cracking down on them. I hope this new tech helps limit those groups.

Dwolb 4y ago
Chicago currently has this problem [1]. Summers bring out crowds of very loud motorcycles that are so large they block intersections for minutes at a time. Other smaller groups of motorcycles perform tricks or go very fast (like, don’t see them coming and suddenly they’re 100m ahead fast) on Lakeshore Drive. Of small note, there’s drag racing that occurs late at night on Lower Wacker. I guess all these groups are having fun but as a pedestrian and driver it feels dangerous and unnecessarily loud. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/otohi5/motorcycles_on_lake_shore_drive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/comments/otohi5/motorcycles...

DrBazza 4y ago

Isn't part of the problem in NYC the sheer number of hard surfaces reflecting sound, i.e. skyscrapers?

ethanbond 4y ago
Well the buildings are there and will continue to be. Foliage and other dampening would obviously be welcome, but insofar as it’s smart to target easily solvable portions of a problem before the hard/impossible to solve portions, no the buildings are not really relevant.

beeboop 4y ago

Posting this because it increased my quality of sleep (life) a lot: wax earplugs. Regular earplugs are uncomfortable as hell and really hard to sleep in. The wax ones are perfectly comfortable and work better. I had to start using earplugs when I met my now-wife because she snores quite a bit. The wax ones were a life saver after a year of really uncomfortable regular ones. I recommend the mighty plug brand (I have no affiliation)