"MUCH TOO NOISY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 11, 14 January 1935, Page 8

"MUCH TOO NOISY."

STREET TRAFFIC.

ENGLISH VISITOR'S COMMENT

WHAT BRITAIN IS DOING

"Your streets are much too noisy. . Not only do your tramcars make 100 much noise—some cars appear to be noisier than others —but you are tolerating noises from old engines, gearchanging, motor cycle exhausts, and other sources against which the whole world is beginning to move," said Sir Henry Fowler, K.8.E., late chief mechanical engineer of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company, president of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, of England, and a n.ember of the Anti-Noise Committee of the British Transport Board, in an interview in Wellington.

Sir Henry referred to the checking of the noise nuisance in London and some of the other large centres at Home, during certain hours of the night, when people were entitled to a little quiet. Something had been done as a start, but much remained to be done. Toward that end all manner of observations and tests were being made in various centres, while there had been set up a complete acoustics laboratory, where skilled men were finding out much about, noise creation and how it could be lessened if not eliminated.

In referring to the noise-checking edict which put into force in respect to certain areas around Charing Cross and Piccadilly, Sir Henry said that it was pretty generally admitted that most of tlie horn-tooting by motorists and taxi-drivers could be done away with altogether.

Anti-Noise Movement Spreads. "Not so long ago I motored through some half-dozen large towns, including Derby, twice in the one day without once having sounded my horn," said Sir Henry. "This slowed me down a little in some places, I admit, but on the whole (he difference in time as compared with what I could have accomplished the same journey in while using (he horn was inconsiderable. This was my own way of testing out the. motor horn problem. It certainly showed rue that 1 had used the horn unnecessarily a good deal in the past. "What has already been done has had a distinct effect on Loudon. People have been made noise conscious, ami many of the best-intentioned people arc endeavouring to help the Transport Hoard to side-step a great deal of the row in London's busy streets. It is this movement in London which hag also been taken up in Germany and America. They know very well that there is far too much noise in every city and town, and far too many cases of people breaking down tlirough nervous prostration through causes of which they are, generally speaking, unaware, and which may be the incessant noise of this work-a-day world of ours.

Suppression Favoured. "I am a magistrate in Derby," said Sir Henry, "and cases" come before me sometimes where people have been injured through not having heard the approaching danger. Sometimes this is caused by lorries with old engines, the sort that make a terrific noice when starting up and not much less when they are going all out. On one such occasion recently a fellow-magistrate whispered to me that it was a pily they had not the power to order such lorries oil' the road. That is only stated to show the trend of thought in respect to street noise. The public are getting conscious of the increasing clamour of some kindjj of motor traffic, and are now inclined to agree to measures of suppression since the matter has been given publicity."

Sir Henry thought some of tlie Sydney streets extremely noisy, particularly that lower end of Pitt Street which Sydney newspapers termed "Hell's Mile." That wus caused by the fact that t lie street was narrow and the buildings on either side were rather high. That created a natural sound box, which emphasised the racket of the tram ears and the motor traffic.