Sleepless in the Elm City: New Haveners grapple with vehicle noise
Ongoing efforts by the city and the New Haven Police Department aim to reduce loud noise produced by cars and motorcycles.
Maria Arozamena, Illustrations Editor
A motorcyclist revs his engine, drawing the attention of onlookers at a busy New Haven intersection. He pops a wheelie and spins in two circles before loudly speeding down the street, trailed by a posse of fellow cyclists.
This scene, uploaded to TikTok in August 2022 with the caption, “A night in Downtown New Haven,” offers a glimpse into the pervasiveness of loud motor vehicles in the city.
Doug Hausladen ’04, who has lived in New Haven for the past 18 years, believes loud noise produced by cars and motorcycles is more than just an everyday annoyance.
“It’s an economic development issue, it’s a quality of life issue, it’s a public health matter, it’s all of these things,” he said.
Hausladen heads Connecticut Citizens Against Loud Motor Vehicles, or Connecticut CALM, which advocates for legislation cracking down on Connecticut’s noise problem. He founded Connecticut CALM in 2011, inspired by a similar effort in Maine.
The city’s loud noise caught Hausladen’s attention when he started attending Yale in 2000 and found himself struggling to get a good night’s rest. He quips that he learned “the joys of white noise machines” shortly after arriving in New Haven, noting that he still relies on the machines to fall asleep.
In addition to disrupting sleep, loud noise increases risk of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Hausladen noted that it might also discourage families from buying homes in New Haven.
Although the noise issue has been a constant throughout Hausladen’s time as a New Havener, he said he never considered moving away from the city.
“I’d rather work to fix it than run away from it,” he said.
City efforts to limit vehicle noise
As of Oct. 30, the New Haven Police Department responded to 2,675 noise complaints, according to NHPD Officer Christian Bruckhart.
Bruckhart emphasized the challenges in enforcing noise ordinances, especially when it comes to noisy cars or motorcycles.
“Cars are, by their nature, mobile,” he said. “So by the time the call gets made, gets placed, the dispatcher dispatches it out, even in a perfect system, you’re dealing with several minutes between the time the call is placed and an officer can arrive. By the time we show up, it’s gone.”
Bruckhart also pointed out that police dispatchers prioritize calls about violent crimes over quality of life issues like excessive noise, slowing down officers’ response times to the latter. With the NHPD facing an officer shortage — as of Aug. 26, 15 percent of the budgeted NHPD positions were vacant, according to Mayor Justin Elicker — it takes even longer for officers to be dispatched to lower-priority complaints.
But Bruckhart said a recent amendment to the city’s noise ordinance has eased the enforcement process when it comes to “boom cars,” or cars with speakers blaring loud music attached at the rear. Passed last September, the ordinance permits the city to fine violators up to $1,000, $1,500 and $2,000 for their first, second and third offenses, respectively.
“I’ve had complaints as far as Branford from people blasting music,” Elicker said, underscoring the role of “boom cars” in the city’s noise pollution problem. He noted that the number of noise complaints decreased “pretty significantly” this summer, which he attributed to the amended ordinance.
Bruckhart added that while the original noise ordinance lists maximum permitted decibel levels — ranging from 45 to 62 decibels, depending on the location and time of day — the amended version allows officers to address any noise that is “plainly audible” from a 100-foot distance.
Future enforcement possibilities
In May, the state legislature passed a law allowing cities and towns to implement noise cameras that detect noise over 80 decibels. The law permits an initial warning, a $100 ticket for a second offense and $250 tickets for subsequent offenses.
New Haven has not opted to install noise cameras. Elicker pointed out that the city is in the process of implementing red light and speed cameras, so he plans to see how effective those cameras are before considering other technologies.
Though Hausladen would support the installation of noise cameras, he expressed skepticism about the cameras’ ability to accurately pick up sound.
For the past decade, Hausladen has advocated for a different legislative approach to noise ordinance enforcement. He’d like to see Connecticut require all motor vehicles to carry Environmental Protection Agency labels stating that their mufflers and exhaust systems are limited to a certain decibel level.
Hausladen described this as a unique enforcement system that would apply to all vehicles, not just those that are mobile.
“If you can make the enforcement mechanism something that happens when the vehicle is parked rather than when the vehicle is moving, that would be a big win for everybody,” he said.
But Elicker notes that many people producing loud noise from their vehicles are intentionally breaking the law and would disregard this legislation. Vehicles in New Haven are often tweaked to produce additional noise, either with modified exhausts or amped-up loudspeaker systems.
He cited the city’s problem with street takeovers, in which groups of cars, motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles block intersections and perform noisy, dangerous stunts. Though participating in and spectating street takeovers is illegal, Elicker said, the city continues to experience this issue. NHPD officers halted two street takeovers on Nov. 1.
“They want to violate the law,” he said. “They want to be disruptive. They want the attention of driving down the street very loudly and people looking at them.”
The NHPD is located at 1 Union Ave.
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