By SHARON O’MALLEY
Courtesy of Don Flanders
Residents who live on or near Edmonston Road parallel to Kenilworth Avenue are asking the city to plant noise-absorbing trees between the two streets to replace the ones removed to make room for a sidewalk.
They also plan to ask the state to conduct a sound study to determine whether a barrier wall, better speed enforcement on Kenilworth Avenue or another solution might tamp down noise that some say is so loud in the evenings that they cannot have conversations when they stand in their yards.
“I can’t hear my neighbor talking to me,” said Maria Cordone, who lives on Edmonston Road in the city’s Yarrow neighborhood and has written to the governor, to city, county and state officials, and to the police about the noise. “I can’t even sit out in the yard because of the noise.”
A group of residents in April met with City Councilmember Ray Ranker (District 3), who lives in College Park Estates, the community next to Yarrow. He said he sometimes hears noise from motorcycles and speeding cars from his house almost a mile away from Kenilworth Avenue.
Similarly, homeowners brought the issue up at a meet-and-greet event with the three candidates who ran in a special election to fill a vacant District 3 city council seat. Ranker won that election.
At the April meeting, Ranker explained that getting the state, which owns Kenilworth Avenue, to add a barrier wall in a community whose homes were built later after the highway was built or widened might be difficult. He said Kenilworth Avenue was widened into a divided highway in 1958; most Yarrow homes came along starting a year or two later.
And Nicole Freeh, who lives in Yarrow and works as a highway engineer for a private company, said a barrier wall is largely ineffective if the affected homes sit at a higher elevation than the road where the noise is occurring. An 18-foot wall, for example, would dull the noise heard by homes on elevations of about the same height from the road level, so “the first 100 feet benefit the most,” Freeh said. The homes on Baylor Avenue–the street behind Edmonston Road—sit much higher than the highway and would not get much relief from a barrier wall, Freeh estimated.
Plus, Freeh noted that constructing a wall would require the removal of additional trees.
Cordone said the thick strip of land separating Edmonston Road from Kenilworth Avenue effectively quieted much of the highway noise before the trees were removed and served as a visual barrier between the neighborhood and the state road. Now, she said, the remaining thin layer of trees, bare in some patches, is inadequate as a noise barrier.
“When I moved here in 2007/2008, we had a nice little forest there, and it did cut down on the noise,” said Cordone, who explained that the noise is loudest between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.
The group’s next move is to meet with the city arborist on May 16 to ask the city to plant large, native trees on that strip of land, and not saplings, which would not offer much protection from the noise until they reach maturity years into the future.
The neighbors also said they will ask the city to support their request for a state-conducted sound study to determine whether a barrier wall is a feasible option or whether the state could take other noise-abatement measures, like installing speed cameras on Kenilworth Avenue.
Ranker said pressure from Yarrow residents could convince state and local officials to take action, but noted results could take time.
Still, he said, “You’ve got to start it. It would be easy to feel daunted by these big projects, but you’ve got to get it started to get it going.”
