Hark, The Noise Will Ring (But Just a Little Softer Before the Complaints Come)

The Mayor finally gets his noise code! Well, sort of. After a year and a half since Mayor B proposed a noise code for Better Quality Of Life, the city council unanimously passed the final version of the code. Now nightclubs and bars must "keep their sound level below 42 decibels instead of the current standard of 45 decibels when measured inside a nearby residence," as explained by the Times. And the NYPD will be getting noise meters to measure the decbiel levels! From the Times:

In a concession to the nightlife industry, the noise code will also make it more difficult for police officers on the street to cite nightclubs and bars for noise violations. Currently, officers can issue a violation to a nightclub if they simply determine that the music constitutes "unreasonable noise."

But now officers will use a noise meter to measure the offending sound in order to meet a specific, technical definition of unreasonable noise: 10 decibels or more above ambient sound in the daytime, and 7 decibels or more above ambient sound at night, when measured at a distance of 15 feet.

The noise meters, which cost about $2,000 apiece, are now in short supply with an entire precinct often sharing one device, but city environmental officials said the goal was to equip each police patrol with its own meter. The noise code takes effect in July 2007.

Oh, wait, the noise code will take effect in 2007? Huh. Some lawmakers are upset with the changes to the noise code, but the Nightlife and Bar Association thinks the bill is now at a fair compromise. Time and our eardrums will tell!

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By Jen Chung in News on December 22, 2005 11:55 AM

Comments [rss]

iceberg

peakguy,

While I'm also bothered by constant honking I experience living a house away from the corner and its traffic light, what irks me more are the incosiderate aholes who pull their car across the intersection, with nary more than their front bumper actually passing the next crosswalk, leaving the box blocked to traffic coming down my block either trying crossing the avenue or trying to make a turn.

My gut feeling is that if that people learned to stop trying to squeeze past the intersection, and instead patiently wait for the road ahead to clear enough to pull up their car, the honking as we know it would cease.

OTOH, I think it would help greatly if the traffic lights were given a European treatment, where in some countries, the green light is preceded by a yellow light, letting drivers know, so they can quicker react to the green.

DaveHimself

2000 DOLLAR DECIBLE METER!?

I truly hope someone hit the zero key one too many times. Youd have to hollow out the best existing decible meter and fill it with molten gold to get its value up to 2 THOUSAND dollars.

iceberg

What I want police vehicles to be equiped with is an automated pothole reporter. The basic function is to marry a GPS coordinate with a gyrometer-reading everytime the vehicle takes a perilous dip. The data collected can then be merged into the DOT's pothole repair system, so that nobody has to go thru the trouble of reporting everytime a new hole opens. There should also be a manual button to take a GPS snapshot for times when the officers chose to steer around the pothole.

peakguy

I didn't see much in their about car horns. We need a real public awareness campaign to stop willy-nilly honking - blaring horns should just be for accident prevention, not "I'm pissed off because the car in front of me didn't floor the gas before the light turned green"