As a North Portland resident, Sam experiences and understands noise issues. Within weeks of being in office, Sam and his staff began addressing cargo aircraft noise from the PDX airport. This quickly expanded to train, freeway, and race track noise throughout the City with the proponderance of the noise focused on North Portland.
Sam recognized that citizens living in North Portland faced a significant set of noise sources and promised to evaluate the extent of the problem and to develop possible solutions. With a small earmark in the 2006 budget, Sam initiated a two-year project to evaluate the noise problems in North Portland.
With help from the City's Noise Review Board and the North Portland Noise Reduction Committee of North Portland stakeholders, the project completed the first year of work. In the first year two separate community surveys were completed by Grove Insight, one prior to the summer open window season and one at the end of summer. The findings from the polling firm offered preliminary indications that North Portland residents were impacted by noise in at a similar level average urban citizens both in the United States and abroad. The second survey focused on a more localized basis of smaller sections of North Portland to help indicate if particular segments of neighborhoods have greater concerns.
Simultaneous to the polling study, an acoustical engineering firm (Greenbusch Group) began collecting sound level measurements. The consultant will be completing a mid project update for January 2007. The consultant and the Noise Review Board are reviewing the data from the second community survey to help direct the second year of Noise Data collection.
The acoustical study will include a series of noise maps that articulate noise sources and their impacts. While this approach of using Noise Maps has been used extensively in Europe and Asia, Portland is the first U.S. city to use this innovative urban planning tool.
The combined years of experience among Noise Control Officer Paul van Orden, Noise Board member and Acoustical Engineer Kerrie Standlee, and the Greenbusch Group is 80 plus years. With the help of our technical experts and all the community members of Sam's North Portland Noise reduction Committee, we will continue working to find solutions to the growing issue of urban noise pollution in our City and in particular in the North Portland neighborhoods.
During this upcoming year, the committee will focus on four major noise pollutants: trains, truck traffic, PIR, and aircraft. If you're interested in learning more about the committee's work, join us at our next committee meeting, January 25, 6:30pm, Kenton Fire Station, 8105 N. Brandon St.
Related Documents
North Portland Noise Survey Results, June 2006 [0]
North Portland Noise Survey Results, October 2006 [0] [0]
Economic Impact Analysis of PIR [0]
Media Mentions
Tribune: City Checks out Decibel Levels [0]
Oregonian: Small Cargo Planes wil Test New Flight Path... [0]
Oregonian: Panel will hear about Noise from Box Haulers [0]
Oregonian: In Oregon Though Neighborhoods Surrounding [0]
Weblogs
Sam is no fly by night [0]