Dear Menlo Park City Council,
I just learned that the City plans to eliminate the Quiet Zone from its
budget planning. This is shocking
and completely unacceptable. Menlo Park residents and businesses have been
advocating for a
Quiet Zone for years. The engineering designs are now nearly complete.
The last step is funding.
Thousands of people are asking for the train horns to stop, and you have
the budget surplus and
other funding options to move this forward. Do Not Drop The Ball!
Four years ago, I bought a home in Felton Gables, next to the train
tracks. My family wants to be
close to Holbrook-Palmer Park, which we use often. So we were aware of the
train noise.
But I didnt realize how bad the problem was until I had a chance to stay
in my new home. Apparently
some drivers lay on the horns louder and longer than others.
Im fortunate in that I dont have to move in right away. I was planning
on rebuilding the house to
be soundproof, but after talking to experts I fear that I might not be able
to build a healthy home
for any price.
I hired acoustic experts, Salter Inc of San Francisco. They came to my
home and used standardized
methods to measure the noise on my property for 24 hours, and they found
that train noise averaged
105db. Thats the average, not the maximum. The maximum they measured was
120dB.
These high noise levels are due to the horns, not the engine. So if we
could have a Quiet Zone it
would make a huge difference.
The acoustics experts advised me that any room with windows is limited by
the quality of the
windows, which at the very best can reduce noise by up to 35 dB. That
means that even if I could
I can afford to build a home with these kinds of materials, the best I
could hope for would be for my
indoor noise level to be about 80dB.
Unhealthy levels of noise are typically defined as starting around 65
decibels. The World Health
Organization recommends that residential noise be limited to 70 dB. Thats
their limit for outdoor
noise, and I probably wont be able to achieve that on the inside of my
house.
Science has found that noise increases risk to health, both physical and
mental. The physical
problems are pretty serious, including heart-related troubles, stroke,
inflammation in arteries and
blood vessels, plaque, oxidative stress, and high blood pressure. And
thats at levels lower than
60dB.
I can provide links. This is not pseudoscience. These are peer reviewed
articles documenting
rigorous experiments and studies. And it is not just one or two studies,
it is easy to find lots of
them. It is widely acknowledged that train noise makes people sick.
I hope you agree that we owe it to ourselves to safeguard our health with
quiet zones.
Respectfully,
David Wuertele
