Calgary Excessive Noise Bylaw - Open House

[Rhystar]

Was that rage2 on tv i saw?

[dirtsniffer]

I hope you proof read that before sending it to the mayor. @cos

[Cos]

.

[M.alex]

How many DBs would a city bus register? Some of those fvckers are loud.

[CanmoreOrLess]

Originally posted by rage2
If they scaled it to 15m, they will need to drop the 96db level to something lower, such as 88db or so to account for wear and tear. I have no problems with that.

I'm just annoyed that unmodified vehicles are at risk of getting ticketed because they didn't do this properly from day 1.

If I were in your shoes, the first day this law is in practice with tickets issued, I'd be among the first to get ticketed on purpose. Beyond members can make the location known in minutes of it going up. Better you deal with this ticketing of perfectly legal vehicles on your terms. MB sold you a vehicle (top of the line) they and you were under the impression all was perfectly within the laws of the land. Get a ticket quick and let's see how deep this rabbit hole goes. MB will be in an interesting area here should you get ticketed.

I will cover 1/10th of the cost of the ticket, gather nine more and we have an interesting fight.

*I'll use my car, when they start ticketing sewing machine noise levels as illegal. Simply too quiet of a vehicle.

[HiTempguy1]

Just throwing this out there dudes...

If this stupid bylaw does pass (and you are lazy and hate freedom), just get a turndown put on your exhaust. Yes, it will look a little funny, but a turndown does a TON for DB readings even though the car isn't any quieter. If the noise doesn't propagate towards the reading device, it doesn't register (as well).

Edit-
And here I was hoping to drive through downtown Calgary sometime this summer and shatter windows with the anti-lag

[M.alex]

Originally posted by CanmoreOrLess


If I were in your shoes, the first day this law is in practice with tickets issued, I'd be among the first to get ticketed on purpose.

Don't you people have anything better to do with your time that to purposely get a ticket then fight it?

[Hallowed_point]

I hope my Somalian neighbor who has what sounds like no exhaust on his regal auction "baller ride" gets a ticket.
Nothing like a 1980's 4 banger vibrating your drywall everyday!

Or the redneck next door with his straight piped Dodge who revs the piss out of it ( through a playground zone everyday)

[black13]

Go Rage! Heard you on the radio this morning.

[rage2]

Our office sent this letter out today to the Mayor and all the Alderman. We'll see where it goes from here.

Dear Mayor Naheed Nenshi and City Alderman,

My name is Shelton Kwan, I am the President of beyond.ca, a car enthusiast website and forum representing approximately 100,000 car enthusiasts in the Southern Alberta area, primarily in Calgary. I am writing to you as our members, including myself, are concerned over the wording of Bylaw 26M96 Section 2(1)(y.1)(vii), also known as the Objectionable Noise Bylaw.

When the idea of this bylaw was first introduced publically in April 2011, our members, including myself, were very receptive to the idea. The general consensus was that noise pollution is rampant in areas such as 17th Ave. SW, where modified motorcycles and cars cause a high level of noise pollution. We welcomed standards and fines to be put in place to correct the issues in high noise areas that targeted modified non-compliant vehicles.

In May 2012, the city made the announcement that the Noise Snare will go live in June 2012. The city held 2 open house sessions to allow cars and bikes to test the noise snare to see if they pass the noise pollution test, set at 96db in the bylaw. On the May 26th 2012 open house, some of our members with stock unmodified vehicles reported failing the noise snare test, which means registering 96db or higher.

At this point, I decided to do some investigation on behalf of our members, and brought my vehicle to the May 30th 2012 open house demonstration. My vehicle is a 2012 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Black Series, a sports car manufactured, tested, and certified under the Canadian Motor Vehicles Regulations by Mercedes-Benz of Canada. At the time of the test, the vehicle had 1924km on the odometer, ruling out wear and tear or any other factors. The vehicle was purchased on April 10th, 2012 from Lone Star Mercedes in Calgary. With the exception of paint protection film, the vehicle is exactly the same as the day it left the dealership.

I performed 3 tests at the open house. The first test was cruising at 50km/h, my vehicle registered a 97db reading, or a violation of the bylaw. The second test was braking from 50km/h, my vehicle registered a 90db reading, barely a pass. The third test was accelerating to 50km/h, my vehicle registered a 102db reading, another violation. Our members spent the next 2 days trying to understand the results. The research, along with full references to City Council Minutes to federal Motor Vehicle Regulations can be viewed here: http://www.beyond.ca/calgarys-excess...ion/15447.html

Summarizing our investigation, we found that noise snare does records noise levels at an absolute level, with no correction or normalization regardless of distance. We also found that the bylaw does not indicate a set distance for measurement. As anyone knows, sound dampens, or lowers, as you are further away from an audio source. A person speaking at a normal tone directly into your ears would be deafening. Your tweet to one of our members indicated that it will be measured at 10m distance (http://twitter.com/nenshi/status/208366617950830592) but that was not the case at either of the open house tests, nor written in the bylaw.

The federal standards and testing procedures require vehicles to be no louder than 84db for any vehicle manufactured for Canadian roads. The federal testing follows SAE J986 testing standards, where the vehicle is tested in the worst case scenario to generate the greatest amount of noise. It is performed in the lowest gear, full throttle acceleration from 50km/h until engine redline, at a distance of 15m. With the noise snare not correcting or normalizing to a 15m distance, stock unmodified vehicles are failing the test. CBC published a story on their website and evening news program on June 5th 2012. Seen here (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...-vehicles.html), Bill Bruce, the head of Bylaw Services, admitted that he knows of 2 stock vehicles failing the test as well, which raises doubts regarding the noise snare technology.

We are not looking to, or asking for the quashing of this bylaw. We feel that this bylaw will work well in high noise pollution areas and will create a better environment for our citizens, as it was intended in the first place. Our suggestion is that the bylaw should be written in a clear and concise manner, and not vague as it is currently written. The noise snare device should either be calibrated to normalize values to the set distance, or measuring at the set distance. If we use your 10m example as well as the federal standards of 84db at 15m, it works out to 87.5db at 10m. We are even happy with lowering the current 96db limit to something closer to the 87.5db level, as long as a set distance of 10m is used. Since other Canadian cities are looking at Calgary to set a precedence on the noise pollution bylaw, it would be essential that we set a fair and reasonable example.

Our fear is that the current bylaw can be abused. A sound meter positioned at the exhaust exit of any vehicle will be no different than putting your ear against the exhaust, and will register a much higher reading than the current 96db limit and will result in a violation and fine. I believe all parties will be served if the bylaw is clarified to avoid such a situation. Thank you.

Shelton Kwan
President
Beyond Media, Inc.

Cc:
Ward 1 Alderman Dale Hodges
Ward 2 Alderman Gord Lowe
Ward 3 Alderman Jim Stevenson
Ward 4 Alderman Gael Macleod
Ward 5 Alderman Ray Jones
Ward 6 Alderman Richard Pootmans
Ward 7 Alderman Druh Farrell
Ward 8 Alderman John Mar
Ward 9 Alderman Gian-Carlo Carra
Ward 10 Alderman Andre Chabot
Ward 11 Alderman Brian Pincott
Ward 12 Alderman Shane Keating
Ward 13 Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart
Ward 14 Alderman Peter Demong

[Commanderwiggin]

^ Good job!

[lilmira]

No "govern yourself accordingly" ?

[Maxt]

Originally posted by M.alex
How many DBs would a city bus register? Some of those fvckers are loud.

Sadly it won't matter, the city will just exempt itself from this, with the addition of something like " created during the normal course of city business" or something like that.. And when you do see that, it will undress that really this about the money and not really about the noise..
They just find small issues, then if they can find away to monetarily gain from the issue, they over inflate the supposed problem to turn it into a revenue source. Bill Bruce has said probably a hundred times now, that Calgary receives around IIRC 4500 noise complaints a year, but notice he doesn't say how many were actually vehicles just driving. I think if you broke it down you'd find that cars are probably a very small fraction of the total complaints, and the people that do call in are dealing with a chronically bad situation in a particular area, where they could find the culprits and deal with them in the traditional ticketing sense. But no, they found a way to go wholesale and probably pound out another 5-10 million a year in revenues, that goes directly to the city, since its not a provincial ticket.

[Go4Long]

good letter rage.

[max_boost]

Oh shit. rage2 vs the City!

[FixedGear]

good letter rage, i'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

[dexlargo]

Originally posted by rage2
Our office sent this letter out today to the Mayor and all the Alderman. We'll see where it goes from here.

Dear Mayor Naheed Nenshi and City Alderman...

Did you send it with all the typos? Don't you guys have spell check?

Regardless, nice work.

Another thing to do to keep pressure up is to check future agendas for the Standing Policy Committee on Land Use, Property and Transportation to see if this matter is ever coming back for review. The committees always listen to the public, so that's a great way to raise your issue. But don't everybody speak! Get one person who is prepped to speak cogently and to the point on these issues so that committee doesn't start to tune out the message. Other people going for support, but not speaking, is great.

One other thing that I was thinking about:

If we think about this bylaw from the enforcement perspective, they want a bylaw that's easy to understand and enforce. Complicating it by inserting a mathematical formula to scale sound readings to a particular set distance would be confusing - both to the public who "can't math", and to police, judges and lawyers, who also "can't math".

So can we propose a solution that is easy to understand, but also fair to vehicle owners? I see two options, but maybe there are more:

1 - Set a minimum distance of, say 10 meters and set the limit for that distance (which is what Nenshi seems to think they're doing) - but the problem with that is it really restricts enforcement as to where they can set up.

Or, my preference:

2 - add a table as a schedule to the traffic bylaw that sets the noise limit for ranges of distances, since the snare measures distance using frickin' laser beams. This would be similar to tables used to set penalties for speeding tickets in the Alberta Procedures Regulation - basically pre-doing the math in a handy, lookup format.

e.g.:

2 meters or less: 112 dBA (all these numbers are totally made up - I don't want to math now)
>2 - 3 meters: 110 dBA
>3 - 4 meters: 106 dBA
...
>15 meters: 86 dBA
Any idiot can look at a chart and understand. This would also give the City the most flexibility in positioning the Snare on different roadways, while maintaining fairness to operators of vehicles. It's balanced, and isn't that all we want?

Whaddya think?

[rage2]

I choose Alderman over Aldermen because I wanted the letter to feel more personalized to the reader. It's not a typo.

The noise snare claims to measure noise as well as distance. We can't get any info on the noise snare technology, as they say they only deal with law enforcement agencies. Our test results pretty much show that the noise snare is capturing absolute noise levels regardless of distance.

The bylaw can state a set distance, and the noise snare, if it does claim to accurately capture noise and distance measurements, should be able to do the math to compensate against the bylaw's distance. No math for public, police, judges or lawyers.

[Go4Long]

precedence instead of precedent as well...but I don't know why that one stood out to me, and it's not like they won't get the idea.

[dexlargo]

Originally posted by rage2
I choose Alderman over Aldermen because I wanted the letter to feel more personalized to the reader. It's not a typo.

I didn't even notice that! No, I really don't want to turn into the grammar/spelling police, especially because then I'll open myself up to the same criticism. So sorry for the offhand rebuke.

But since I stupidly opened my mouth, what I was referring to were just a couple of small things: precedence vs. precedent; "we found that noise snare does records"; etc., of which, to be fair, none would be caught by spell check and none of which are really all that big of a deal.

I also thought "publically" was incorrectly spelled, but apparently that's an acceptable alternate spelling for "publicly" - so that shows what I know.

The noise snare claims to measure noise as well as distance. We can't get any info on the noise snare technology, as they say they only deal with law enforcement agencies. Our test results pretty much show that the noise snare is capturing absolute noise levels regardless of distance.

Agreed.

The bylaw can state a set distance, and the noise snare, if it does claim to accurately capture noise and distance measurements, should be able to do the math to compensate against the bylaw's distance. No math for public, police, judges or lawyers.

Not unless the bylaw is worded to allow for scaling to a set distance - which is possible to do. I know lawyers, and angry ticket recipients, and I know that they will question the methodology of the scaling, etc. Require the City to prove the science behind the scaling formula (which would entail the City having to call an expert in this science to prove it at each trial - which is expensive), unless the formula is defined in bylaw. And if there is a mathematical formula included in the bylaw, then judges will also complain, "how is a person supposed to understand the math?", etc.

In my opinion, it's easier if all math and science requirements are removed from laws/bylaws - just do it all beforehand and lay it out in an easy to read table and make the table the law. It makes it easier to enforce and for people to know where they stand.