If one seeks hard enough, one can find what could be the seeds for future noise abatement growth, or at least evidence that some areas of government can hear what's going on. On April 16, 1969, the Associated Press carried the information that the Birmingham, Alabama, city council had adopted a law making it illegal to operate transistor radios on city buses. It seems that the bus drivers had complained they were a distraction and kept them from hearing emergency sirens.
New York's Mayor Lindsay refused to permit six-second commercials to be blasted at subway riders at each station stop, calling the idea an invasion of privacy that could not be justified as revenue.
One of the more promising developments, for riders of mass transit, is the Bay Area Rapid Transit System now under construction in the San Francisco Bay area. Scheduled for completion in 1972, it is being built according to specifications that have certainly heretofore been alien to American mass transit purchases. The specifications section entitled Audible Noise Control Requirements starts out with this directive: "The Supplier shall devote particular attention to the design of quiet equipment, and methods shall be incorporated in the BART transit vehicle design to attenuate that equipment noise which does not meet the noise level limitations indicated."
There is a great deal of interest in the first "urban zone of quiet" created in the United States. This area is New York City's Central Park, where—thanks to the innovation of former Parks Commissioner Thomas P. F. Hoving—weekend motor traffic is banned. It would be more promising if the ban extended vertically to include aircraft flyovers.
New Bedford, Mass., Director of Public Health, Alphege Landreville, told a panel on public health at the University of Massachusetts: "Somehow, local health departments must accept new responsibilities in medical care...and what is now rapidly coming to the forefront, abatement of noise." He mentioned the wailing sirens of fire apparatus, ambulances, and police vehicles: "These are heard at all hours of the day and night and are particularly disturbing, irritating and frightening to young children who are awakened out of a sound sleep."
Politicans, many tending to abjure leadership in favor of waiting for evidence of public demand, are sensing their constituents' concern about the nitty-gritty of day-to-day living as well as the traditional major issues. In analyzing why Mayor Lindsay lost the Republican Primary in 1969, The New York Times reported that the major issues of crime in the streets and racial tension were not the only important factors. "Some more important factors would seem to be:...general frustration with the mundane urban crises of garbage cans, broken park benches, potholes..." In short, the environment.
Not all politicians fully respect the noise issue, though they may anticipate votes in it. One candidate for state assembly lumped together as a platform plank: "elimination of air pollution, vagrancy, noise and parking problems." But maybe other candidates will keep alive the "Sweet Sunday" concept espoused by novelist Norman Mailer and newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin when they ran for Mayor and President of New York City's City Council in the 1969 primary elections. Directed at air pollution, it would have required the ban of all vehicle traffic and pollution-causing machinery one Sunday a month.
Indicative of a growing Federal interest in noise abatement is the issuance of a contract by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for new and low-cost methods and materials to cut down noise transmission within dwellings and the entrance of noise into dwellings from the outdoors. The objective is laudable, but how much new building design and construction techniques will the $160,000 grant buy?