Letters: Din City: Hey, How About Some Quiet?

To the Editor:

Re "Behind City's Painful Din, Culprits High and Low" ("What?" series, front page, July 12):

New York City noise is so nerve-racking that I just had to take an extra vacation in the quiet north. To your list of noises, add loudspeaker repetition of transit announcements ad nauseam. Trains screech as if maintenance were skimped.

Midtown food trucks emit noise, exhaust and odors, just so people don't have to walk one block to a restaurant or stop getting fatter than the mayor supposedly wishes. Trucks beep too loudly when backing up.

Car alarms no longer disturb people's sleep? Try 74th Street! Car alarms may no longer disturb car thieves, because people know that they usually go off by themselves.

I called 311 about a construction site operating beyond the hours that the Buildings Department told me were permissible there. An inspector visited the site during the permissible hours, to bear witness that it was operating after hours. Huh?

Big projects drag on, partly because of excessive regulations, lawsuits and union rules.

RICHARD H. SHULMAN
New York, July 12, 2013

To the Editor:

Three cheers for your article highlighting New York City's noise problems. Let's not forget the maddening sound of dogs barking incessantly in neighboring apartments and back gardens while their inconsiderate masters do nothing to stop it.

MIMI SHERATON
New York, July 12, 2013

The writer is a former restaurant critic for The Times.

To the Editor:

When I was living in a still-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1980s, I was awakened several times one night by a blaring car alarm in the street outside, even though I slept in the back of the apartment.

The third or fourth time, I ventured to a front window, only to witness a neighbor, brandishing a baseball bat, who proceeded to beat the living headlights out of the offending vehicle, smashing doors, windows, hood, until finally the alarm stopped for good.

I later heard that the car owner lived on a different block, and left the car on ours while he was on vacation. On his return, he saw the damage, and a note about what provoked it. The report was taken by a police officer, without sympathy.

BILL STOLLER
Pleasantville, N.Y., July 14, 2013

To the Editor:

The illegal noise that New Yorkers have to endure from noisy motorcyclists is endemic in the rural Midwest. Just ask anyone who lives in a small town on the Great River Road along the Mississippi: the weekend din is earsplitting, and heartbreaking.

We live two miles and on the other side of a ridge from a popular byway, and we can hear the packs of loud-pipe lawbreakers while we work in our garden. They have won. I can only pray for the gasoline to run out.

ROALD EVENSEN
River Falls, Wis., July 12, 2013

To the Editor:

A lot of us have learned that an inexpensive square-ish window fan (set on the floor and pointing in a harmless direction) provides ample cover for ambient rackety outside noise. Set from low to high (depending), the whir will subsume a significant level of unwanted sound.

Fan noise is white noise, easy on the ears (pretend you live next to a waterfall). I have been using this "cover" at night for 50 years. In fact, you can get addicted to it, and eventually find silence "disturbing."

Once you're accustomed to your waterfall, you're way ahead of the game. Thousands of us in the "fan club" are already addicted. Why not sign up? No, it won't cover the very worst.