Amendments target noisy mufflers

Municipalities will have a way to deal with loud vehicle mufflers that disturb residential and business districts with changes to the provincial Motor Vehicle Act announced Friday.

Public Works Minister Kim Masland said amendments will allow municipalities and the province to install traffic control signals for bicycles, authorize municipalities to create bylaws for muffler noise, and confirm that police officers have the authority to issue a 90-day suspension to anyone who fails or refuses to comply with a demand to take a test related to impairment.

Because mufflers are part of motor vehicles, anything to do with them until now fell under the Motor Vehicle Act, and therefore could not be regulated by municipalities.

Sue Uteck, the executive director of the Spring Garden Area Business Association in Halifax, said the roaring mufflers have been annoying shopkeepers, the public, and food businesses with outdoor patios for a long time.

“It’s been an issue for years, in the days that predate me as a municipal councillor (from 1999 to 2012),” Uteck said. “It’s an excellent move.”

She said “the revving, look at me, look at me, I’ve got my brand new Harley, the unregulated… cars with the mufflers, you know some of these cars are well above the decibel limit.”

Halifax Regional Municipality councillor Shawn Cleary (District 9) said the council had been asking for action from the province on the muffler and bicycle traffic control for years.

“These are very, very good changes,” he said. “They’re going to be good for us.”

He said he’s glad that the ability to have a muffler noise bylaw will come to the municipality.

“We can now define what an objectionable noise level is, then we’d be able to ticket. Our officers would have to walk around with some kind of decibel meter, but we’d be able to do that.”

He said the noise is particularly bad in the summer with the number of souped up cars and motorcycles on the roads.

But, he said, it would be easier if the province just made aftermarket, loud mufflers illegal, or set a provincial law on decibel levels.

Doing so would mean that there would be a consistent level across the province, and avoid having different municipalities setting different maximum decibel levels that could make a vehicle legal in one municipality or illegal in another.

Bicycle traffic control gives municipalities or the province the ability to set traffic lights that control the movement of bicycles outside of all motorized vehicle traffic through intersections. It can also allow bicycles to travel across some crosswalks at a separate time than pedestrians, so cyclists don’t have to dismount and walk across.

“That is going be really important for us, too, as we build out our network of bike lanes, local street bikeways and active transportation trails,” Cleary said.

HRM spokeswoman Brynn Budden said the municipality requested that bicycle signals be included in the Act, to help build some of its bike facilities.

“These are common across Canada, as some bicycle facilities require the use of bicycle traffic signals to facilitate bicycle crossings at intersections. The first installation of these here in our region will be at the Macdonald Bridge head in Dartmouth.”

The confirmation for police authority to issue a 90-day suspension to anyone who fails or refuses to comply with a demand to take a test related to impairment was put in place to clarify that officers can issues the suspensions for people who refuse drug screening or roadside sobriety tests, not just breathalyzer and roadside alcohol screening devices.