SC actually gets place closed down...(long)

[ditchdj]

Yeah but you gotta keep in mind that the bottom line is someone's making money. That's why the apartments got built, even over everyone else's objections.

[HYHYBT]

On a side note , we had the mayor suggest for relieving the problem of noise complaints from neighbors of the local airport was by selling homes nearby at low cost to deaf people.

Sounds like a good deal for everybody to me. What's wrong with it?

[blas]

In my hometown, for many many years, the race track/speedway was right at the end of city limits, no houses nearby, etc etc.

Then a bunch of hoity toities decided they wanted new housing developments with all the extra land nearby......and guess who was the first to kick and scream about the noise of race cars on Friday and Saturday nights in the summer?

Also, there are idiots who live nearby the hospital, KNOWING they live right at the point where the ambulance will turn its siren on when it leaves (there is a designated "quiet" zone that lasts for a few blocks right next to the hospital), and they have the nerve to complain about that.

I know that's bullshit because my parents once looked at a house nearby the hospital years ago, and they were even warned that it was right at the special spot where the ambulance will start up the siren, and that's one of the reasons they didn't take that house.

[Dips]

Some of the blame falls on developers and real estate agents, They make money by building the places and they don't care that it will be noisy for the buyers because they don't have live there. There is no law requiring developers to disclose noise issues. And real estate agents work for the seller, not the buyer. They are under no obligation to disclose noise issues and the saavy ones will be sure to only show houses when the noise isn't happening.

Please don't bother telling me that the buyers should do some research. I know that. I said "some of the blame" falls on the developers and the real estate agents who work for them. I know that the rest is on the buyers.

There are also issues where a business that was there first changes how they operate or expands their operation. That's not the case in the OP, but not every case has a clear cut villain like that one.

For example there is a gravel pit near our neighborhood. It was owned by a pretty decent guy who made sure never to start his machinery before 7:00 AM, didn't operate on weekends and even made courtesy calls to a few neighbors before he set off explosives. [These neighbors had dementia and forget from day to day why they were hearing explosions. The courtesy calls made a big difference.]

Then he retired and his sone started to run the business. He starts the machinery any time he wants and operates whenever he wants. I'm a mile away and my next door neighbor's house shields us from the sound so it doesn't bother me, but some of my neighbors are quite upset.

Then there was the time he decided to clean out his cement trucks with jackhammers at 11:00 at NIGHT. We are a mile from him and we heard it pretty clearly. I can't even imagine what it was like for neighbors close by. One of them must have called the police.

And, to his credit, he stopped as soon as the police told him to.

But he tried again a few weeks later. Police were called again and this time he's been quiet ever since.

Even so, the son is not a 100% horrible neighbor. He's been a real peach about helping alleviate some issues with flood control of a stream that flows through his property and I give him a great deal of credit for that.

But this all illustrates that these things are more complicated that they appear.

[draftermatt]

Some of the blame falls on developers and real estate agents, They make money by building the places and they don't care that it will be noisy for the buyers because they don't have live there. There is no law requiring developers to disclose noise issues. And real estate agents work for the seller, not the buyer. They are under no obligation to disclose noise issues and the saavy ones will be sure to only show houses when the noise isn't happening.

Exactly.

Locally there was a big dust up last year in the next town over from mine. A new development went up, new school, etc.

Problem was, nobody apparently told the buyers of the houses that the road that ran parallel to their neighborhood was going to be shut down and all traffic diverted through their neighborhood to take advantage of the new stop lights at the new intersection.

When the development was laid out in the 1980's it was designed to do this.

They had people at the town council meetings every month throwing a fit about truck noise, danger, etc. Threw such a stink that they actually got the old road to stay open.

Last I heard some of them were thinking about going after the developer or real estate agents for not disclosing the plan about the road, as they would have never bought had they known. Lot of good that'll do them.

[Shalom]

Ask anyone near you, how many airports are there in New York City?

Most people will say two: JFK and LaGuardia. Some oldtimers who still remember when Floyd Bennett Field was active will say three. The correct answer, though, is four: the one they all forget is Flushing Airport, a few miles east of LGA. Even though it was closed and abandoned in 1984 and is basically now a swamp, it is still carried on the books as an airport, and the reason for this is that the people in the neighboring apartments, who were the ones who got it shut down in the first place (even though nobody forced them to build and move into an apartment house literally at the end of a runway) know that if the airport is completely taken off the books, its air traffic routes will revert to LaGuardia, which currently can't allow planes to take off to the east due to the presence of this phantom airport, and there will be jets overhead all day long...

Likewise, there are folks who bought houses near Jersey Transit's former CNJ line in Monmouth County, now used only by an occasional freight, who are doing their damndest to ensure that no passenger service ever comes back to that line. Hey, those tracks have been there since 1866... how long ago did you move there?

[HYHYBT]

It's not the same thing; almost the opposite, but this thread reminds me of something close to home...

The road I live on is U-shaped, roughly. The two legs of the U attach to road A, which is parallel to road B, about 100 yards past the curve of the U and was originally connected to U by C. This allowed residents to leave in whichever direction was closer to where we wanted to go, but because of the lengths of A and B and the locations of other connections there was virtually no through traffic. Ten years ago, more or less, they started building a new subdivision almost directly across B from U, which upset many of the neighbors because they didn't want the through traffic. The city dug a ditch and put in a fence across the end of C nine years ago, cutting us off from B which is only a minor nuisance and probably worth it. The funny thing is, EVERY online map, GPS, etc still shows the connection. A week or so ago there was a motor home wandering around in here trying to get to the campground, which is on B; they'd missed a turn and their GPS told them to come through here. None of which has any point, I guess

[protege]

Likewise, there are folks who bought houses near Jersey Transit's former CNJ line in Monmouth County, now used only by an occasional freight, who are doing their damndest to ensure that no passenger service ever comes back to that line. Hey, those tracks have been there since 1866... how long ago did you move there?

...and I bet these are the same people who will turn around and bitch about how bad the highway traffic is

But, I've seen some strange things on GPS every now and then. At one of the past railroad conventions, one of the guys set up his GPS unit in one of the rental vans. Most of the main roads showed up clear as day. But, one of the roads we were on...was once the Reading Railroad's Catawissa Branch...which had been abandoned after Conrail was formed in '76. Pretty freaky to be driving through what appeared to be a big field on the GPS. Even more freaky...was to carry the unit out onto the old rail bridge...and see the GPS saying you were standing in the middle of the Susquehanna River, with no bridge at all!

[dalesys]

Ah yes, the GPS errata


"The voices on my dash told me to drive here!"

[HYHYBT]

Ah yes, the GPS errata


"The voices on my dash told me to drive here!"

http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff100/fv00048.htm

[Mamadrae]

We have a few places like that even in my cornfield. I never knew it but apparently the local sex shop here is historical. Someone tried to close it down for some dumb reason and to combat it they became a landmark. I'm not sure how that got pulled off though since I'm not from here, hubby likely would know more.

One I do know is the carnival called Cornfest. It was a big deal and held literally right in the downtown area. Vendors would have stalls in the streets and I believe it stretched on for a few blocks.

Apparently the residents of the downtown area though no longer liked it and wanted it to move, while the businesses of the area wanted it to stay since it kept a number of them afloat (hard thing to do when you have big box stores and the like spawning like rabbits in the commercial area of town). There was a real back and forth over the issue but eventually the residents won and Cornfest was moved to the airport off the tollway. Folks still go but now they lack proper parking areas so you have residents nearby screaming about people parking in front of their houses and the downtown area is starting to look shabby with no businesses to occupy the place.

[TexasT]

Something similar happened at my college. My college is older than the state of Texas and was developed when Texas was its own country. Somewhere along the line (I imagine somewhere around the Civil War, but could be completely wrong) train tracks were built going by the campus. In 2005, the apartments I lived in opened up right across the streets from said tracks. Soon after, the student paper had several complaints about the tracks. One genius even went as far to say, "I heard a train going by a 2 am. Who on earth needs to ride a train at 2 am?" Dumb.

I grew up living on various bases and now live across from a hospital that ambulances occasionally arrive at. I never complained because I have a brain.

Oh, and I can tell you from extensive experience---you get used to it. As a matter of fact, my little sister was creeped out when we no longer lived near a base and she couldn't hear planes. If you stop your complaining, I bet you don't notice the sound.

[Sliceanddice]

so.... what happened on the last night CRML?

[wolfie]

Couple weeks ago I was on I80/I90 (Indiana Tollway), and saw some (what looked like) new housing developments near a few toll plazas. You know, those places where you have to slow down to a crawl (if you've got the transponder) or stop (if you're paying cash). Since it's an interstate, a lot of trucks use it. Do you know what trucks use in order to save their brake linings? Hint - it's called a "Jake Brake".

Of course, just before the toll plazas were signs "New law - engine brake use prohibited". Looks like people moved into new houses near the tollway, then complained about the noise from the trucks.

[Broomjockey]

Of course, just before the toll plazas were signs "New law - engine brake use prohibited". Looks like people moved into new houses near the tollway, then complained about the noise from the trucks.

I wouldn't be sure about that one, actually. Around here, it's standard for that to be a ticketable offence inside any municipal limits. So, if they have similar rules, with a new development, the municipal limits may have just naturally expanded to include this section, so now they put the warning up.