Lamenting Louder-Than-Ever Lives

I would argue that the "peace and quiet" of bygone days is largely a fiction used to support your argument.

At the turn of the century most small towns were built with the rail line running right through the middle of town. There was nothing quiet about steam trains, and the railroad was never asked to moderate their operations to quiet things down. The noise was seen as part of progress and therefore a good thing.

The cities were worse, with not only steam trains running all over town, but major switch yards incorporated into daily life, with the noise and commotion of street cars with constantly clanging bells, and the horns of the new autos constant to warn pedestrians to their presence.

With new quieter aircraft engines, revised takeoff procedures and constant sound monitoring around airports we have knocked the sound of airports way down from say, the '60s. I personally live in an approach pattern, and contrasted with my experience in the '70s of having to stop conversation while aircraft passed we are way better off than even 20 years ago.

Recent innovations like "quiet asphalt" have reduced arterial and highway noise substantially.

Now if we could get "those damned kids" to take off their headphones while driving, emergency vehicles could probably turn their sirens down.

/crabby old man mode (you kids get off my lawn!) = OFF

1: Use ear plugs, that's what I do.

2: Invest in hearing aid companies.

Pick up your sticks and roll your apple cart to yesteryear

Prioritize

In residential areas, use quiet horsepower for local deliveries and consolidating collection. Quiet horsepower can be battery, or the application of really efficient silencers, or it can be horsepower.

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This is a 200kg pony shifting a 900kg generator through Birmingham for a carnival. The power is there, the manoeverability outclasses any conventional vehicle as the pony can move sideways. Over a delivery distance of 1/2 a mile, we might have saved 4 minutes in a car, but no standard car tyre would have had the traction to haul the generator onto the grass in the park.

For collecting recycling, street rubbish collection, community gardening projects etc, pony power offers a quiet efficient power source that people like. I am launching a project bring ponies back into cities to do useful work. The idea is not to displace people from jobs, but to displace noisy polluting machinery (not all machinery is in that category, so it is only the noisy polluting stuff we are targeting) and to bring pleasure into the community because People Like Ponies.

The noise attributed to horses in the past came from steel wheel rims, but we have moved on and I believe there is a radical new idea called pneumatic tyres out there. The other source of noise is steel shoes on horses, but again technology has gone past the idea of nailing metal onto feet as sensible footwear. Henry, the pony shown, has never worn shoes, and his feet are hard as nails.

Ponies will not solve every problem, or most problems, all I am suggesting is that they might solve some problems, while bringing enormous pleasure into peoples lives.

Simon

In my town(Really 3 large interconnected municipalites with smaller but growing outlying suburban towns/villages interspersed mostly with prime agricultural lands)with a combined combination of about 515,000 individuals at this time(Waterloo Region)the public transit is a Regional effort...Several hybrid large buses are in service and the difference in accoustical affront when one of these passes my perch outside a local coffe shop and a regular bus is phenomenal..So, step one is getting the driven only by controlled explosion petroleum or equivalent driven engined vehicles to hybrids quickly wherein the quiet humm of electrical power fades to a background enableing conversation at street level as one of these public transit behemoths passes by...Planners,in time can insist on hybrid travel only in downtown corridors and i expect occassional cruise nights allowing the quickly growing archaic controlled explosion driven vehicles access to the Strips of our municipalities for nostalgia buffs will develope..

Really,replace all conventional engines with electrical enginesor hybrids makes accoustical/environmental sense..I've allways been of the opinion that excess noise in a moving machine be it car/milling machine/press/drill etc is indicative of wasted energy..which is still an expensive commodity to waste on inefficient processes..when generally it(the process in question)can be fine tuned to eliminate a large proportion of the wasted(noise generating)energy.

Regards...MArty Wolf

I live in rural North Dakota. (center of the north American continent)

We solved the noise problem before it ever began! Its called don't live on top of each other! In a calm clear evening I can hear my neighbors talking in their yard a 1/4 mile away. The loudest thing I have to deal with in the morning is a rooster pheasant that likes to invade my yard!

If you don't like the noise other people make, just don't live by them!