Hacker News Reader

Comment by ng12 | Hacker News Reader

> inherent problem of rapid-transit noise

What inherent problem? Rapid transit is certainly quieter than vehicle traffic. Noise pollution comes from sirens and heavy trucking, not public transportation.

View on HN

When they re-route the rapid transit bus 1 block so it ends up going down my street during street repairs, my kid and my wife and myself get regularly woken up starting at 4:45am. Then the bus keeps going till midnight. Yippee what fun!

If a bus is your noise threshold you should be living on a farm, not one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the country.

If you can notice people at a bus stop outside your house then you need better sound insulation. If you want to keep your windows open at night and have that be quite then move the the middle of nowhere.

I say this as someone that lived near an airport, even guests did not notice unless the windows where open.

Definitely. If it really bothers you, you can invest in double-paned windows and a good ventilation system. I used to live right under the San Diego flight path [1] and slept beautifully every night.

1. Not my video, but my neighborhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_M8PCO3BvE

The state-of-the-art arrived at triple-paned by now.

I assumed rail is part of this bill, my bad.

Buses regularly have speakers announcing the stop (85th and X) that can be heard at quite a distance.

I guess people think this is a joke or nimbyism, but it is a legit concern. We all know by know how important sleep is to health. well, that rapid transit noise (even bus) is a factor. Trucks and cars, late at night, have a flow. Buses stop, the speaker garbles all too loudly, air brakes hiss, and the slow elephantine weight of the vehicle is dragged into motion by a guttural engine rumble.

Surface level rail often has horn-sounding mandates near road crossings. Caltrain and freight raik through the Peninsula does, for example.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com