Scientists who work in the field of noise are fatalists. They equate noise with progress, and the future with noise. They believe advancing civilizations will create more noise, not less.
The key to tomorrow's noise is quantum, a dramatic jump in noise sources, noise intensities, and human sensitivity. At the same time, there will be a decrease in our ability to escape.
Demographers predict that by the year 2000, 50 per cent of the population of the United States will live in three supercities: "Boswash," a megalopolis stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C.; "Chipitt," stretching from Chicago to Pittsburgh; and "Sansan," encompassing the area from San Diego to San Francisco.
There may be as many urban buildings constructed in the next 40 to 50 years as in all mankind's history.
Cities and suburbs alike will reverberate to the roar of the jackhammer and the air compressor as they strain to accommodate the 80 per cent of the population expected to live in urban areas by 1985. Some idea of what it will be like is already heard in New York City, with its annual average of 10,000 demolitions plus 80,000 street repair projects. To add acoustic insult to the "normal" construction noise injury, the construction industry is planning to use helicopters to place heavy slabs of concrete and other building parts into position. The Westchester County, New York, local of the International Union of Operating Engineers (its members operate air compressors) is training some of its members to operate helicopters for that purpose.
Bedlam, anyone?
But this will only be the frosting on the acoustic cake. By the year 2000, 73 per cent of the estimated 180 million cars in the United States may be distributed among the 235 million people projected as dwellers in metropolitan centers. Each vehicle has the potential of brake screech, horn blowing, engine noise, and tire noise.
Probably aware of the potential road block, civilization is moving ahead with the development of high-speed train service. This is fine if somebody designs a quieter engine. If not, a new dimension in sound will be added to the lives of those living adjacent to the railroad tracks. They will hear the "screaming electric motors" as the trains roar by "in a terrifying swoosh of noise." Or at least that's what is expected by the reporter for The New York Times who covered the first public test of a new high-speed train for service between New York and Washington.
As bad as the future looks in terms of noise from surface traffic, the greatest threat to acoustic sanity is posed by the vehicles that will be shuttling back and forth on aerial corridors in the sky. It almost seems as if all dials are "go" for the human race to noisily take to the air.
One hybrid form of transportation is the hovercraft. This vehicle "floats" on a cushion of air a few feet off the surface, which may be either land or water. It has not yet been clearly defined as aerial, marine, or surface transportation. But whatever else it is. there's no doubt that it is noisy.
Private pleasure hovercraft are entering the market, and what noisy skimobiles are to the winter sportsman, noisy hovercraft are becoming for the summer recreation-seeker. There are models powered by 100-hp outboard motors, models powered by 30-hp air-cooled foreign car motors. One model can travel over lake, river, snow, and marsh areas. In England a do-it-yourself kit has been developed and in 1966 Britons were warned by one newspaper reporter to brace themselves for the new din of homemade hovercraft, "a new menace to British eardrums, including those of horses, cows, and sheep in once peaceful, rural retreats."
And out in America's winter wonderlands it's no longer the sound of sleigh bells ringing but snowmobiles roaring.
As if to guarantee that no habitat will be free of the noise of jet engines, the Department of Defense (DOD) is now developing a jet belt that enables its wearer to fly over buildings and streets. Powered by a small fan-jet engine, it promises a new contender for any list of ten most unwanted sounds.
But these developments are nothing compared to what's in store in "normal" aviation. So rapid is aviation development that only statistics do it justice. Projections for the decade ending 1977 are for an increase in passenger miles flown from 76 billion in 1966 to 266 billion in 1977. To serve these passengers the aviation industry will provide more and larger planes and more airports. The FAA forecast is for 180,000 general aviation planes to be produced by 1977, plus 3,500 transports. This increased volume of aircraft is creating a demand for more jetports. The thousands of planes aloft during the day now require 10,000 landing facilities. As of September 1, 1969, 259 were needed for jets. The FAA projects another 132 jetports by 1974. The pressure for jetport expansion is being met by strong resistance by a public unwilling to put up with such a noisy neighbor.
Jet takeoffs and landings are responsible for much of what it is like to live with aviation noise. The FAA projection to 1977 is that its air control towers will be handling an increase of landings and takeoffs from 41.2 million to 139 million.
What is in store for the nation's larger cities is indicated by the prediction that Los Angeles International Airport will handle 80 million passengers a year. Skeptics doubt that the Boeing 747 and the projected 900-passenger C-5 Galaxy will significantly reduce the number of plane movements.
Tomorrow means an increase in the number of people subjected to jet noise, and an increase in the number of exposures. Part of that increase in noise exposure is caused by the increasing distance from the airport in which jet noise makes itself felt. Where once complaints stopped at a radius of four miles from the airport, the growing blanket of jet noise now radiates a distance of fifteen miles from airports, and further.
Formerly pastoral resort and spa areas are being encroached upon. Witness the recommendation of the Hudson River Valley Commission, which believes that to increase the over-all values of the Valley there is need for landing fields to accommodate the rise in recreational travel by air. It suggested a study to prepare a plan for a system of small landing strips to provide access to recreation areas, "with proper controls to assure that users of such areas are not disturbed by aircraft noise." Given today's airplane engines, what kind of controls does this Commission have in mind?
If there is one immutable law that governs aviation development, it is escalation. More and larger aircraft, and more and more airports, not only in and around large cities but in the small towns of America.
On March 5, 1969, the Lakeland High School in Shrub Oak, New York, was jammed, but not with students. From 7:30 P.M. until midnight, the State Joint Legislative Committee on Mass Transportation held a public hearing to assess public opinion on the proposed Somers Airport. Except for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency promoting more airports, all the spokesmen—town supervisors, high school principals, conservationists, and representatives of citizens' anti-airport groups—were opposed.
The Somers facility, proposed for the heart of a suburban-exurban-rural region, would generate enough noise to preclude Federal Housing Authority mortgages, to interfere with the classroom activities of more than a dozen schools, to require close to half-a-million dollars for soundproofing schools, and to force the rezoning of valuable residential property for commercial and industrial use. Somers was rejected as a site, but the FAA, in cooperation with state, regional, and local authorities, has recommended a nationwide development of new general aviation airports and the expansion of smaller airports.
There is now a more immediate threat to the cities, and its initials are V/STOL, vertical and short takeoff and landing planes. (These include helicopters.)
To relieve congestion at the major airports, the FAA and the aviation industry, in cooperation with local and state governments, are promoting V/STOLs for interurban service. The STOL can take off in a short run of a few hundred feet. The VTOL takes off and lands straight up and down, and then cruises like a fixed-wing aircraft. Because of the relatively small space requirements, these craft are deemed feasible for mid-city areas. There are today some 55 VTOL projects around the world, and in the back of the minds of their developers is the anticipated market for interurban transportation.
Morris Ketchum, a past president of the American Institute of Architects, told New York's First Conference on Urban Noise Control, in March 1967, that he predicted city planners will set aside land for use of STOLcraft on cleared lots, abandoned piers, atop railroad stations, over railroad tracks. A few months after Mr. Ketchum's predictions, the senior vice president of Eastern Airlines reported that air traffic delays were costly, and he recommended STOL planes for short hauls between cities in the Northeast Corridor, stretching from Boston to Washington. In October 1967, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was already investigating the need for V/STOL service in Boston, Hartford, Providence, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Trenton, Baltimore, and Washington.
The FAA 1968 National Airport Plan recommends 25 STOLports for the New York-Washington, D.C. corridor and the West Coast. Nine are scheduled for New York City.
Nassau County and New Jersey communities are evolving plans for STOLcraft operations to Manhattan, with, as one idea, landing pads to be built in the rivers around the island.
What will happen to the urban environment when New York, for example, at only one STOLport site, accommodates an expected 14 million passengers a year plus two million tons of cargo? And how will downtown Los Angeles fare, and Anaheim, and the area around the STOLport in your city or suburb or small town?
The acoustical consulting firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman has stated in its house organ Activities, "The development of vertical takeoff-and-landing planes might eliminate some of the nuisance around large airports but it would spread the problem [of noise nuisance] to many other locations."
Proponents try to lessen opposition by claiming the approaches and takeoffs will be either over water or in non-residential areas. But these planes are designed to fly at low altitudes and it is difficult to visualize a flight path that avoids residential areas, schools, hospitals, and parks. As a matter of aviation safety, the height of office buildings makes flight paths over residential areas safer and thus more desirable.
V/STOLs are not butterflies.
Gird for protest.