Believe Your Ears? Noise Complaints Outnumber the Numbers
The sounds of the city so easily converge into an ever-present hum that it’s easy to forget just how loud it is. The West Side Spirit spent a morning walking the streets of the Upper West Side to test exactly how much noise emanates from the bustling pavement.
Despite the fact that Community Board 7 received the fifth-highest number of noise complaints to 311 in the past year (5,662 calls) of the 12 Manhattan community boards, ambient noise on the street on a recent December weekday hovered at a normal range of 72 to 88 decibels.
The New York City Noise Code notes that Midtown Manhattan traffic usually falls between 70 and 85 decibels, and the Upper West Side adheres to that range fairly closely. The spikes come from occasional bursts of sounds, like an ambulance rounding the circle at 110th Street and Central Park West en route to Lenox Hill Hospital at 98 decibels, or the 88-decibel motor of a Mack truck roaring past.
At Lincoln Center, sitting in the pedestrian triangle where West 66th Street and Broadway converge, the surrounding cacophony of motor and foot traffic measures an average of 86 decibels, as compared to a more peaceful vibe in Central Park at about 74 decibels or the sterile, quiet hum inside the Columbus Circle mall at a steady 72 decibels.
City Council Member Gale Brewer said that she receives calls with all kinds of noise complaints.
“It’s not anything you can see from walking around,” said Brewer. One of the most frequent complaints is about the giant HVAC systems that adorn the roofs of larger retail stores. “We get those [complaints] in the summer pretty regularly,” she said.
Another big issue is the noise from private garbage trucks that pick up commercial hauls in the middle of the night, Brewer said.
Matthew Friedman, who lives on the corner of West End Avenue and West 72nd Street, said he has made dozens of calls to 311 to complain about the beeping, compacting and idling sounds that come from trucks in the middle of the night near his apartment.
“I’ve measured their decibel levels as high as 104, for sometimes as long as 30 minutes,” Friedman said.
Arline Bronzaft, a psychologist and noise expert who has served under the past four mayors as chair of the noise committee in the city’s Council on the Environment, gets scores of noise complaints from around the city. She said she hears the most complaints from the Upper West Side about individual construction sites, particularly the ongoing building at 732-4 West End Ave., and “neighbor noise.”
“New York is a noisy town, we understand that,” Bronzaft said. “But the noise code does not cover neighbor noise. That’s in the lease.” It’s up to landlords to address noise problems within buildings.
Brewer said her office receives about three or four calls every month from residents with neighbor noise headaches and she tries to mediate them when possible, convincing people to put down carpets or install other sound-dampening measures.
“Every kind of noise is available for complaining,” said Brewer, adding helicopters, restaurants and rooftop playgrounds to the list of noise-causers.
“It’s cheap to prevent; it’s costly to ameliorate,” said Bronzaft, arguing that individual companies need to work to mitigate noise before it becomes a nuisance. “New York is a noisy city, but we can lessen the din.”
Sounds of the Upper West Side
A sampling of sound readings from around the neighborhood, taken with a Sound Level Meter. A normal range of street noise is between 72 and 88 decibels (dB).
Barking in the W. 72nd St. dog run 79 dB
Traffic at the intersection of W. 71st St. & Amsterdam Ave. 78-88 dB
Entrance ramp to West Side Highway 86-88 dB
Truck idling 90 dB
Garbage truck driving 105 dB
City bus idling 89 dB
Cellist and violinist playing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” at Columbus Circle subway station 86 dB
Honda mini generator on a hot dog cart 104 dB
2 train passing through 66th Street subway 101 dB
Inside the downtown 1 train 88 dB (94 when braking)
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