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The Scourge of Airport Noise

askthepilot.com

61–70 of 91 posts

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They go up if you build more densely and then hop in your car and drive an entire block to your destination, which some Americans insist on. But if you walk, bike, take transit, it gets better. People don't automatically adapt just because you build it differently and people typically have trouble imagining genuinely living differently without actually experiencing it.

Some people don't work a block away. Oh wait: Almost NO ONE works a block away. Increased density means increased traffic, period. Has this equation been reduced by working at home? Sure. But it remains a fact of life.

I see you never lived anywhere with decent public transportation. Better public transportation infrastructure + increased density + parking is expensive + increased traffic = reduction in car usage over time.

It's America's problem of its own making, you need to find a solution, just shoving more lanes for cars, more suburbs with single detached homes, is not solving absolutely anything. No, not every rural small town will have Dutch-levels of access to trains but you can definitely improve the situation on the densely populated areas of the East and West coast, just have to get rid of this obnoxious and gauche car-addiction.

The longer you take to transition out of car-dependence, the more painful it will be.

Good luck on solving it, doesn't seem like American society put much value in it, you seem to like to suffer in traffic.

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#62
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some measurements: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=609&feature=shared The noisiest vehicles in the centre of Copenhagen seem to be diesel delivery vans, so it's a decent improvement as these are swapped for electric ones.

The center of Copenhagen has very different traffic composition than essentially every American city.

The context was "densification if done right could even make things quieter", and Copenhagen — at least the centre and inner districts — is generally considered to be doing things right.

Slowly driven electric cars are slightly quieter than slowly driven petrol/diesel cars, but the greater improvement is the slowly driven vans, trucks, refuse lorries and so on.

(Especially the electric refuse lorries! No more loud diesel thing emptying bins at silly-in-the-morning.)

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it doesn't change at all with electric cars, because most of the noise comes from tires, not engine exhaust. Next!

Some measurements: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=609&feature=shared The noisiest vehicles in the centre of Copenhagen seem to be diesel delivery vans, so it's a decent improvement as these are swapped for electric ones.

We're talking about densification. In a non-dense (e.g. American) city, everything is spread out, there's highways, so cars travel very fast. In a dense city like Copenhagen (and also here in Tokyo), there aren't many highways or cars so the traffic is mostly trucks traveling at low speeds.

Tire noise is negligible at very low speeds, but diesel engines are noisy. So in a dense city, you notice the noisy trucks with their clacking engines. In an American city, vehicles are whizzing by at 100+kph on multi-lane roads or highways, so you hear tire noise, even from a distance.

Making all the cars in America electric isn't going to do anything about highway noise. But making all the trucks in Tokyo electric would really make the roads here a lot quieter (and they're already pretty quiet, it just depends on where you go; places with lots of stores need trucks, whereas neighborhoods don't).

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#64
post #33

Passing through Jakarta airport the other day, there was an announcement which was literally on a continuous loop with no pause in between. It was only about 15 seconds long. Considering I couldn't understand a word of it, after a short while my mind drifted to a mental playback of the "corporate accounts payable Nina speaking - just a moment" scene from Office Space. Nobody around me seemed to be disturbed by it at…

Jakarta's airport and the general Indonesian attitude towards regulations was for me encapsulated in seeing an air conditioner unit in the domestic airport with prominent NO SMOKING/NO SITTING signs, with an Indonesian dude happily perched on top smoking kretek like a chimney.

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#65
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise in cities is primarily driven by cars. Densification if done right could even make things quieter (e g. Reduce stroads and have more bicycles)

Road noise is mostly white noise when indoors, and reduced to nearly inaudible by good windows. The really disruptive noise is caused by increased density - the apartment above with a subwoofer or an exercise routine that involves dropping weights, kids running up and down the hall shrieking, stuff like that. Landlords are supposed to address issues like that, but getting them to handle noise issues can be very frust…

This isn’t really a problem in modern buildings built from concrete to condo specs. It just happens that most dense US cities have much older buildings, or that people put up with low quality buildings built to rental specs because landlords are allowed to get away with it.

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#66

Kinda the same as 'please listen carefully as our menu options have changed' and 'we're experiencing higher than usual calls'. Or all the texts I get about remindeds of appointments followed by asking for reviews. It's like every channel is being abused to get us to do something. And I fail to pick out the important ones. Side note, with people wanting more dense housing, noise levels will go up.

Noise in cities is primarily driven by cars. Densification if done right could even make things quieter (e g. Reduce stroads and have more bicycles)

This is a claim from one of the militant urbanist YouTube channels. The method used to establish that was using a microphone next to a road.

The issue is that people don't care about the noise on the street nearly as much as they do about the noise inside their dwelling. And car noise doesn't make it inside the houses while people noise does, and, with the dense housing, often originated in the same building. And a microphone outside an apartment complex will indeed fail to record e.g. a fitness enthusiast on top of your bedroom setting an emergency lifting reps record at 3:30 am.

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise in cities is primarily driven by cars. Densification if done right could even make things quieter (e g. Reduce stroads and have more bicycles)

This is a claim from one of the militant urbanist YouTube channels. The method used to establish that was using a microphone next to a road. The issue is that people don't care about the noise on the street nearly as much as they do about the noise inside their dwelling. And car noise doesn't make it inside the houses while people noise does, and, with the dense housing, often originated in the same building. And a m…

Noise caused by residents of high-density housing is typically well-regulated by community standards and peer pressure. Eight years ago, when I was touring a model unit, I asked the landlady if it was quiet here, and she said yes, other than people coming home from work. And this has proven true. 95% of the time is it peaceful, quiet, and idyllic. I live in very close proximity to 100 other families encircling a courtyard. I often hear swimmers in the pool, but I seldom hear loud amplified music, fights, dogs unduly barking at nothing, or other disturbing noises.

I live in a college town, but I do not live in a college community. As such, the city has rather strict and extensive ordinances against noise, such as that generated by parties. Therefore, both the landlady and law enforcement are on our side if we ever have trouble with noisy neighbors.

I don't know how it is in other cities. I've heard from friends who lived in Manhattan that sometimes the noise was intolerable, but nothing could be done about it. Perhaps if neighbors don't care about neighbors, that's what happens. We have yet to progress to such anarchy around here, fortunately.

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#68
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise in cities is primarily driven by cars. Densification if done right could even make things quieter (e g. Reduce stroads and have more bicycles)

Road noise is mostly white noise when indoors, and reduced to nearly inaudible by good windows. The really disruptive noise is caused by increased density - the apartment above with a subwoofer or an exercise routine that involves dropping weights, kids running up and down the hall shrieking, stuff like that. Landlords are supposed to address issues like that, but getting them to handle noise issues can be very frust…

Our community features a dedicated gym on-site, so it would hopefully be easy to convince the exercising neighbor to take it where it belongs!

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise in cities is primarily driven by cars. Densification if done right could even make things quieter (e g. Reduce stroads and have more bicycles)

This is a claim from one of the militant urbanist YouTube channels. The method used to establish that was using a microphone next to a road. The issue is that people don't care about the noise on the street nearly as much as they do about the noise inside their dwelling. And car noise doesn't make it inside the houses while people noise does, and, with the dense housing, often originated in the same building. And a m…

“And car noise doesn't make it inside the houses”

Oh really? I’m sitting inside my apartment listening to car noise right now. Our apartment sits away from the street too, probably 150ft away.

Re: The Scourge of Airport Noise

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a major reason that people pay for premium lounge access, it is not the food, nor the booze but the quiet that is the true luxury. Not true for middle-class lounges such as Centurion, Priority Pass, and most airline lounges (Polaris, Flagship, Senator, Singapore, etc). Most go for food or drinks. The lounges are often crowded and loud with silverware, plates, kids, and TVs. For elite lounges such as the Pri…

Oh god, TVs in public places is another one. Automotive service, doctor office waiting areas… I need to start carrying around a universal remote.

I went to a medical clinic a few weeks ago. This clinic is in a town which is a Native American enclave within a regular city. The natives there are majority Catholic, and there is a colonial-style church in the middle of town.

I was 45 minutes early, and the only soul in the waiting room. The TV was blaring and I tried sitting right under it so I wouldn't be distracted by it. But it was playing some reality show featuring young adults. They had some outing to a cemetery, and they were actively, constantly making crude sexual references, and then they started mocking and blaspheming the Catholic faith, (the faith of the native population being "served" by these predatory White colonist medical people) and joking about ghosts and séances and other garbage.

So, I went back to the front desk, and I simply politely asked if she could power off the television. She seemed perplexed by my request, like nobody asks that, but she didn't ask why, and she complied with my request, and I enjoyed some peace and quiet after that.

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