Behind City?s Painful Din, Culprits High and Low




A helicopter takes off from the East 34th Street Heliport, near rows of residential apartment buildings along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Manhattan.

New York Times
By CARA BUCKLEY
Published: July 12, 2013

The first helicopter thundered overhead at 8:05 a.m., as Christine Reekie was sipping her morning coffee. Another one came a minute later, and another, and another, and yet another, swooping so low she feared it would not clear the transmission lines. Ms. Reekie had suffered a small stroke two years earlier, and now she shakily began noting each flyover in writing. By noon, she had counted 14, as they jetted to and from the Hamptons right over her home in Floral Park, just over the border from Queens on Long Island.

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A motorcycle with loud exhaust pipes crosses the Brooklyn Bridge, passing residential buildings in Dumbo.
?It is a classic, male, testosterone-level kind of thing,? said John Hurley, a motorcycle activist and columnist who goes by the name Rogue. ?Much like a rooster walking around, hoping the hens will look at them.?

New York City once sought to curb the noise, mirroring efforts by many communities nationwide. A few years ago, several City Council members proposed to ticket bikes that lacked tags indicating they met noise requirements set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The plan was shelved after motorcyclists protested that the enforcement would be uneven and unfair; many legal pipes, the bikers said, lack such markings.

The city?s noise code now stipulates that a bike is illegally loud if it is plainly audible at 200 feet away on streets where the speed limit is 35 miles per hour or less. But enforcement requires resources and willingness, and few police officers want to risk chasing motorcyclists through city streets, according to Peter F. Vallone Jr., the councilman who proposed, but did not reintroduce, the bill to ticket illegal pipes.

Bikers interviewed throughout the city said they had never been stopped for loud exhaust pipes.

?They let off the Harleys,? said Peter Baldwin, of Sheepshead Bay, who added that even if he was ticketed, it would be worth it. ?You can give me all the tickets you want,? he said, ?just don?t peel me off the floor.?

Here is the full article:

OUTDOOR ROAR -- Behind City?s Painful Din, Culprits High and Low (click link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/nyr ... ulprits-high-and-low.html

also see this piece from today's NY Times:

THE LONG WAR ON LOUD
Many Pleas for Quiet, but City Still Thunders (click link below)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/nyr ... nders.html?pagewanted=all