Putnam: More highway noise reflected by sound barriers just their imagination? Maybe not

LANSING TWP. – Could the new sound barriers along U.S. 127 actually make the traffic noise worse for nearby residents?

Some Groesbeck neighborhood homeowners say that recently erected concrete noise barriers south of Lake Lansing Road didn’t decrease the traffic noise at their homes as intended.

In fact, they say, it’s even louder than before.

Jane Dailey, a 33-year Groesbeck resident, lives four blocks from the highway. She closes her windows at at 5 a.m. each day to stop the roar from the trucks.

“The way the sound echoes now, it sounds like the ambulance is pulling up in your driveway,” she said.

Barriers along the northbound lanes on the east side of the highway between Frandor and Lake Lansing Road were completed in December.

Another resident, Michael Allen, 55, has lived five blocks away from the highway on Ridgeline for 12 years, but he’s visited the 1959 mid-century modern home his whole life. His grandparents owned it.

There’s no doubt in his mind that it’s louder than ever.

He can clearly hear the trucks and cars while on his front porch or gardening in his back yard.

“It’s really kind of a constant drone anymore. It’s certainly one of those first world problems I’m not going to whine about,” he said.

But, he added, it does decrease his enjoyment of his yard and affect his quality of life.

Michigan Department of Transportation officials say they will check out the claims but that the walls follow best industry practices in reducing sound.

Studies recommend that barriers on either side of the highway be separated by at least 10 times the height. The walls are 30 feet high and 300 feet apart.

“..there should not be a perceptible increase in traffic noise levels resulting from the installation of the new northbound noise barrier,” Tom Zurburg, MDOT’s noise barrier program coordinator, said in an email.

Aaron Jenkins, a spokesman for MDOT, said a recent sound test showed traffic noise at 95 decibels inside the walls but at 68 decibels on other side of the wall that runs next to the southbound lanes. 

“It’s definitely doing its job,” he said.

Still, two university sound experts contacted for this column said that it’s possible the addition of the second wall, under certain conditions, may worsen the sound for neighbors on the other side of the highway.

It could be their imagination, but it might not be.

Related:Contractor faces nearly $1M in state fines for long-delayed U.S. 127 sound wall project

“It ‘may’ be possible that if the barrier on the other side was erected at a later time, the reflections towards the residents in question would cause issues, but this would be hard to prove,” said Koorosh Naghshineh, chair of Western Michigan University’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department, in an email. His research includes sound and vibrations.

He said that it may just be the wrong perception.

“Unfortunately, once the perception of the barrier becomes that it is worse, then people tend to forget how it was before the barriers were erected,” he said.

Another sound expert, Robert J. Bernhard, vice president for research at the University of Notre Dame, said it’s unlikely the noise has increased enough to be detectable —except under certain conditions.

He said that sound doesn’t always follow the same pattern and that weather affects it.

“Here in South Bend, there are days I can hear the trains, which are probably two miles away from me. I can hear the trains really clearly, and most days I don’t hear them at all,” he said.

In the mornings, for instance, when the sun warms the air but the ground is still cooler, it could cause the noise to jump over the highway barrier. Having the second barrier could also add to the sound reflected into the neighborhood.

“I think the effect is slightly worse because of the second barrier, but I think there could be enough changes in geometry, refraction, sound 'filtering' etc., that it would be noticeable,” he said.

Another possibility is that the walls are changing the sounds that are heard by filtering out higher-frequency sounds. It’s not louder, but different and therefore noticeable.

When I first heard of Allen’s observation and wondered if he was alone, I turned to Facebook and posed the question.

I counted 21 residents who agreed that the noise was worse with the second wall, while eight said it was the same, that they couldn’t tell or that it had improved.

Some neighbors have downloaded an app and are checking the acoustics in their yards.

Just their imagination? Maybe not. 

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on twitter @judyputnam.