[quadrangle]

Cities aren't loud, cars (and trucks) are loud

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

Video discusses this thoroughly. There ARE quiet cities amazingly enough. And suburbs are a HUGE source of the noise IN the cities they surround because it's the car traffic from suburbs into the cities that makes much of the noise.

Cities ARE loud, but they don't HAVE to be.

[bogomipz]

How about the non-stop construction and non-stop road work? How about clubs and bars with outdoor speakers? Helicopters, industrial cooling/HVAC. I could go on. It's far more than just cars. What are these quiet cities that magically have none of these things?

[bigDinosaur]

I never noticed, walking around the nicer European cities, that any of those things made nearly the same level of noise as the cars. Seriously, walk through Paris or something and tell me that clubs and bars and helicopters and AC are even nearly as loud as the cars when you walk next to a busy road.

I can't think of an exception to this in any city I've been in, honestly. Which cities have lots of clubs and bars with loud speakers out the front? Is that common in the states?

[Tade0]

Try the less nice ones then.

In terms of decibels cars are indeed louder. But not all noise is created equal.

I have noise-cancelling headphones - they do a great job removing white noise(so traffic, among others), but aren't too effective against sounds with a more focused spectrum like people yelling in the middle of the night, bottles being broken or trash being collected in the middle of the night.

[bigDinosaur]

I...have walked around the less nice parts of Paris? I'm not sure what your point is. In the less nice parts of Paris, the noisy areas are still mostly the areas with busy roads. It's simply the biggest source of noise pollution in cities and I haven't found anything that comes close. Maybe in specific areas you can find people playing obnoxiously loud music with helicopters buzzing over constantly but that's certainly a very specific and hopefully rare set of circumstances. The same with yelling and crime and so on. If that's the default in your city I'd agree you have vastly greater problems than the sound of cars.

[Tade0]

Not much a problem in my city, but those which I've been to that are seen as "walkable" and with a "vibrant city life". Essentially all places with considerable tourist traffic.

Paris is very densely populated - I'm surprised anyone attempts to drive there, because at these densities and distance between buildings it must be horrible.

My point is: it's not that clear cut. Removing cars is what makes places like Paris bearable, but the problem lies in the sheer population density that a truly walkable city over a certain scale requires.

I moved to a city that has 2/3 the population density of my previous location and even though it's just swamped with traffic, it's actually quieter on average.

I feel like population density is completely left out of the conversation. From my experience there's a middle ground between car-oriented suburbs and human pile-ups like Paris(or other cities approaching this density) which is rarely explored.

[bigDinosaur]

I certainly would agree that Paris isn't an ideal city. My experience has been that cities with 1-2 million inhabitants with reasonable, but not extreme, density (i.e. much denser than suburbia but less dense than Paris) have been the most pleasant.

[adhesive_wombat]

Some of Paris is nice, quiet, leafy arrondissements. Quite a lot is not.

[bigDinosaur]

That's not my point. My point is that the noisy parts are the parts with cars, and the areas without many cars do not have anything approaching the noise levels of busy roads. I am aware that not all of Paris is quiet and leafy...

[bogomipz]

Miami, NYC, LA to name a few. And it's far more prevalent now since covid as most places have some outdoor seating now and they've seemingly all installed speakers.

[ajuc]

It's banned in all Polish cities I've been to. And for a good reason.

Half the problems with America seems to be lack of regulation and the assumption that it can't be changed :)

[adhesive_wombat]

America fascinates me because half of the time things are functionally unregulated, and the other half of the time there's a law about Kinder Eggs and the exact height your lawn must be.

[ajuc]

We're playing Call of Cthulhu pen&paper RPG campaign set in modern USA. Our DM has to check the laws in each state often, and usually it derails the session by how completely absurd it is.

Like our party was able to carry a bazooka around openly in one state :)

[throwaway0a5e]

The HN demographics would regulate things to the point of absurdity if left to their own devices. In the US they only reach critical mass to do so in affluent suburbs, so you get stupid local laws about lawn height and other attempts at legislating conformity. Occasionally they get thrown a bone by the federal bureaucracies or legislators on some meaningless issue that nobody will care enough to oppose. This is how you get lawn darts and random food products effectively banned (not that lobbying doesn't also result in odd small things being banned too).

[bigDinosaur]

That's unfortunate, and definitely sounds like a problem that should be dealt with. For whatever reason the same thing didn't happen in Australian cities which are structurally quite similar to North American cities so it's not inevitable.

[goodpoint]

> What are these quiet cities that magically have none of these things?

There is no magic, just legal regulation and it just works. Switzerland and Japan are good examples.

[quadrangle]

As the video I posted mentions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

The Dutch city of Delft in particular is just intentionally designed to care about noise. Both design and regulations. Turns out that when you simply prioritize reducing noise, it's actually doable. And it's still a city, albeit a modest-sized small city, not a major regional hub or a global-level metropolis. But the lessons can be applied anywhere.

[agumonkey]

And electric vehicles are a lot less so.

Everytime I get passed by an e-bike my brain has a little pleasure seizure from not having to suffer the expected rawkus.

[afiori]

vehicles are make noise with the engine and wheels, so light electric vehicles are super quiet, but heavy vehicles tend to be loud regardless when moving fast

[wongarsu]

Electric cars are certainly far from silent, and somewhere at the high end of city speeds they are hard to distinguish from other cars because most of the sound comes from the tires.

But subjectively I don't mind the tire noise nearly as much as the sound of an accelerating petrol engine.

[ryukafalz]

When I’m walking next to a busy road (which the only two multiuse pathways near me are next to), it’s quite loud and most of the noise is tire noise. (To the point where you have to shout to have a conversation with someone walking with you.) Those trails would be much more pleasant without the cars there, electric or not.

[sjg007]

It all sucks. High pitched tire wine, unbalanced thumps. Diesel engines are the worst.

[afiori]

True, but tire noise is sort of proportional to both weight and speed and electric vehicles are on average heavier due to huge batteries. So a fully electrified city would have a very different noise profile but not necessarily quieter or louder.

[agumonkey]

Fair point

[xattt]

I am dreading an EV dystopia where all vehicles are going slow enough to create a cacophony from the mandated low-speed sounds.

It would sound like something out of a William Gibson novel.

[bogomipz]

I apologize if this is a silly question but is that currently mandated or is this something that will likely be mandated when the EVs become dominant? My impression was that they are currently relatively silent but that might just because they are always in proximity to a combustion engine idling next to them.

[Centigonal]

Currently mandated - newer electric cars make this noise that I would put somewhere between "future theremin"[1] and "terrifying alien chorus."[2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qe1wuDsXVk

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvX7NnlhiOE

Bonus: Kia's sounds like an ambient synth track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZwVJPN0Ow

[xattt]

There are electric school buses in my area that emit the sound of the Montreal Metro when driving at low speeds:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu_1JM_UiuA

This is because the manufacturer is based in Quebec.

[agumonkey]

it's worth testing indeed, that said these car sounds are under control, not impossible that in slow dense urban spot you can lower them

[refurb]

Not true at all.

Currently live in a dense city in Asia. Remove all the personal vehicles and it would still be noisy as hell. Just business vehicles delivering food, removing trash, etc. are a decent amount of noise. The high building density reflects and concentrates the noise.

Then add in construction, road work. Even the worker moving trash bins around by hand every evening is loud.

Pure fantasy to have dense city living an little noise.

[sarchertech]

Sure, but neither do suburbs. You could mandate everyone drive electric vehicles with tires optimized for low road noise.

[ajuc]

Tesla going 90 km/h is almost as noisy as regular car going 90 km/h. Engine noise only dominates at low speeds.

[sarchertech]

1. Notice I said tires optimized for road noise. 2. Most suburban homes in the US are far enough from roads with 55 mph speed limits that high speed road noise isn’t penetrating the home.

[datameta]

And most residential areas in cities have a 25-30mpg speed limit

[eurasiantiger]

And what is the speed limit right outside your house/apartment?

[ajuc]

On small roads between the blocks ("strefa zamieszkania") it's 20 km/h. Also pedestrians have right of way over cars on these roads everywhere, no matter the crossings. Usually these roads are made of bricks and have these "bumps" so you won't go much faster even if you wanted to. That's the closest road to me (like 50 meters from my flat).

On regular roads it's 50 km/h. There's one like 300 meters from my flat.

On a few big multilane roads it's 90 km/h or more but the closest such road is 700 meters from my flat, and it has these noise-cancelling panels around it.

[burntoutfire]

It's worth adding that 90%+ of Polish drivers ignore speed limits...There's hardly any police or speeding cameras (apart from a few selected areas which everyone knows about, and does not speed there), so the speed limits really work on sort of "opt-in" basis.

[ajuc]

Eh, sure, but on the local "strefa zamieszkania" nobody goes over 30 km/h. You hardly can go faster there.

[quadrangle]

Well, given that the whole suburban sprawl style is also financially reckless and unsustainable, the answer is to get rid of car-dependent style of development and life entirely, not just tweak it by going for electric cars.

[aconsult1]

It's funny how my brain reacts to all caps very similarly as if someone is literally shouting in front of me during a conversation. Must be the decades of internet forums and emails.

The first time you shouted my eye was twitching. By the third time I could almost feel a stroke coming from the increase in noise pollution.

Humans are so susceptible... pfff