‘Really, really, really noisy’
Greenwich residents seek a solution to traffic din
GREENWICH — The reverberating sound of trucks and cars pounding along Interstate 95 “is a problem 24 hours a day,” Greenwich resident Susan Foster said, as “the noise washes over the entire Riverside community.”
“If you stand in the middle of the field at Eastern Middle School, you can hear” the noise from the highway, she said. “People don’t realize how bad it is. It’s very profound.”
Louis Van Leeuwen has used a meter to measure the sound from the nearby highway at his Riverside home. It’s a consistent 70 to 75 decibels, sometimes as high as 80, he said, which is far above the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s residential guidelines of 55 decibels during the day and 45 at night.
“It’s pretty terrible most of the time,” Van Leeuwen said. “It’s constant night and day, and at night it’s actually worse because noise travels farther at night. At night, you can hear the trucks downshifting and upshifting and motorcycles racing by. It gets pretty bad.”
Even though state laws on noise pollution have exceptions for cars and trucks, Greenwich residents hope to address the problem when the state
Department of Transportation begins a $200 million project next year on the 6.6 miles of I-95 from the New York border to Exit 6 in Stamford.
First Selectman Fred Camillo has formed a new committee with representatives from across the town with a goal to meet directly with CTDOT officials about the noise issue as the state prepares to embark on the massive construction project.
The project’s goal is to improve the pavement, bridges, storm drains, guiderails and concrete barriers along the entire stretch of I-95, according to CTDOT. It will also alleviate congestion on the southbound side of I-95 at Exit 3 by widening and extending the deceleration lane. Work would begin in the fall of 2022 and take three to four years to complete.
Noisy neighborhoods
Liz Peldunas, president of the Riverside Association, which is part of Camillo’s committee, said the noise from I-95 is a problem throughout her neighborhood.
“I was at the Riverside Train Station and ... you could still hear the noise from the highway,” Peldunas said. “It comes off the Mianus River Bridge, and it’s a funnel up the river to the railroad tracks and the station. Standing there at the train station was comparable to standing right next to the highway, which is just amazing to me . ... The noise travels all over the place.”
Foster also pointed to the many trucks on I-95, which are the biggest source of the noise. And with people doing more and more online ordering, she fears the noise will get worse with more
trucks on the road.
Noise pollution from I-95 is also a major challenge in Byram, where resident Brian O’Connor said the noise from I-95 is often an unpleasant reminder of where he grew up near the Major Deegan Expressway in New York City.
“It wasn’t like that when we first moved here three years ago,” O’Connor said of the noise from I-95. “We just want somebody to listen to us and hear what we have to say.”
And in Cos Cob, the newly formed Loughlin Park Neighborhood Association complained about the noise coming from the Mianus River Bridge and the I-95 overpass.
“There is no buffer for any of us,” association member Janice Merrill said. “There is no green space. There’s just air between people’s houses and the highway. It is really, really, really noisy.”
New technologies
Noise could be reduced along I-95, Foster said, by using new technology in highway construction that uses mixes of asphalt that can significantly reduce the noise levels from tires on roads.
“There are several different kinds of what’s known as quiet pavement,” Merrill said. “It is being used already in Connecticut. North of Hartford almost to the state line there’s a 10-mile stretch that uses quiet pavement technology. That’s a longer strip than we have.”
Foster said there are also quiet bridge joints, which could significantly reduce noise, since the I-95 work will include the bridge over the Mianus River.
“There’s no downside to these quiet bridge joints,” she said. “The only issue is they cost about 20 percent more.”
Foster said these upgrades need to be part of this project.
“The time is now to do this,” she said. “This is $205 million. Once they do this, they’re not coming back through here again. It’s going to be another 40 years before we see them. We either get this new technology applied here or we don’t get it. And if we don’t get it, we have more and more truck traffic at higher and higher speeds. The impact on the quality of life is profound.”
“There is proven technology that undoubtedly can solve the problem,”
Van Leeuwen pointed to the possibility of sound barriers, quiet pavement and quiet bridge joints and said, “The noise can be substantially reduced, I think, to a level that would be quite tolerable.”
O’Connor, a member of the Byram Neighborhood Association and Camillo’s I-95 committee, agreed that this I-95 construction project offers a “remarkable opportunity” to mitigate the noise
problem.
“We would love to have sound barriers put in just because of our proximity to 95 in Byram,” O’Connor said. “However, anything we can do to help mitigate that noise would be a win for us.”
CTDOT solutions
Even though residents are complaining about the noise from I-95, sound barriers are not likely to be included in the project, according to Kevin Nursick, spokesman for the CTDOT. The planned work is not a Type 1 federal project, which means it does not qualify for a noise study and therefore noise walls will not be included.
But he agreed there are other possible solutions.
“The department continues to investigate different pavement types ... to address multiple goals, including performance, constructability, life cycle costs and noise mitigation,” Nursick said. The possibilities “include replacement of the various bridge expansion joints within the project limits, which, coupled with new pavement surfaces should reduce noise levels at these locations.”
Also, reconstructing the roadway “with a new, undamaged driving surface should reduce noise generated from vehicles traveling over cracked, worn, deteriorated surfaces,” he said.
Foster said she and others recently reached out to state Rep. Kimberly Fiorello, R-149, for help. They took Fiorello to Eastern Middle School, where the lawmaker said she was surprised by the noise levels.
Fiorello said she has called the legislature’s contact at CTDOT to describe the noise and ask for a sound engineer to check the situation. She said she visited three homes and the school and found the noise level “incredible.”
“When I was in their homes, the truck sounds almost made it seem like they were going to come in right through the house,” Fiorello said.
State Sen. Alex Kasser, D-36, noted the “extensive research” into new technology to reduce highway noise and said she wanted to get answers to the questions from the Riverside and Byram Neighborhood Associations.
“I acted as a facilitator for constituents, and I will continue to ask DOT to use whatever noise mitigation strategies are most appropriate,” Kasser said.
Peldunas said the town’s different neighborhood associations are united on the issue of reducing noise on I-95.
“There is absolute 100 percent agreement that this is a problem and it must be addressed,” she said. “I think people are frustrated and tired of not being heard on this issue.”