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Citizen complaint of the day: A little notice of sleep-killing street work, please
By adamg on Mon, 10/21/2013 - 7:44am
A weary citizen filed a complaint at dawn today about overnight work outside his or her window on Salem Street in the North End:
All night LOUD work site was quite disruptive to sleep for my young family. Wish there would have been some more communication for the neighborhood. All I knew was that the water was going to be shut off...would suggest that next project like this communicate that water will be shut off and there will be all night construction noise such as pipe cutting saws, front end loaders hauling gravel and dragging metal street covers, hammering and generators.
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Comments
men at work
Hello, complaining person. You live in a city. Look around. It's like Richard Scarry's Busytown, but with sound effects.
Do you also complain about sirens, car engines, airplanes, other people?
For chrissakes.
Why so hostile to a reasonable request?
It's not unreasonable to expect that even in the city things will be quieter at night. You will note that the complainer did not say "Horrors! How dare anybody make noise in the night!" They said, "The city should have communicated with the neighbors to warn them that there would be noise all night long."
Whiners are increasing
When you get as old & cantankerous as I am, you realize that there are more important things to complain about.
Kids are wrapped in bubble wrap so they never learn that a stupid stunt can hurt them. It doesn't matter if they flunk a test, cause Mummy or Daddums will threaten to sue the principal and the school board if they don't get a passing grade. Tourists complain there is too much sand on the beach, or that it rained on their ski vacation and they expect a refund.
I can't be the only one tired of hearing "life is happening, I wanna complain about it".
I also suspect there was more notice, somewhere, than "the water's going off".
Noise in the nighttime in a city? Sheesh.
Old and cantankerous
I'm pretty old and cantankerous myself, and I've lived adjacent to the Beacon Yards railyard for over 50 years. I'm plenty aware that cities are noisy, both in the daytime and at night. I'm also sick and tired of people trying to argue that anyone who lives in a city who complains about unusual noise levels overnight is behaving unreasonably.
WTF??!!
Ok,
WTF do you want? City hall gets complaints about dead squirrels, signs in the middle of the sidewalk, everything. So, a contractor is fixing gas pipes, water, sewer, whatever pipes. AT NIGHT. Maybe traffic is a factor. They are paying to fix it off time. They ARE fixing it. What do you want? Special notices to your ipad? Did they hand deliver special notices saying, "Take snowflake to a four star hotel for the night"?
Nope. They just started digging.
Did they post, 'No Parking Construction' signs? Yup, I'll bet.
THEY ARE FIXING STUFF. Move to friggin Detriot where they don't fix shit.
Hell, last night they worked on Brighton Ave. At NIGHT.
Take a shit in the morning. Take little snowflake into the bathroom, point to the shit and flush the handle. Say, "Goodbye, you shit." Then explain to the offspring that you will never see that little shit again because of the noise of people working to fix the problem.
Then send them off to school.
Hmm...
You sound like someone who didn't get any sleep last night. That tends to make people really cranky.
Your exaggerations are
Your exaggerations are annoying.
The origianl post said they were notified that the water would be shut off. And there probably were parking signs. Each of these existing notices could have included the phrase, "This work will be noisy."
Traffic a factor? No
Not on Salem Street. You could close the whole thing to traffic and the only people really affected would be the small shops who get deliveries.
Old enough to know better?
So if you are old enough to think people complain about worthless things, why ever would you spend your time complaining about people complaining about trivial things? Can't beat em, so you joined them?
I didn't call the mayor about it
Much love, 02134
right
Nobody called the mayor about it. The guy who wrote the complaint did so online, likely in less time than you've probably spent on this very page already today. He also has a decent chance of accomplishing something with his complaint, while you are just complaining about someone using the proper channel to complain about what he complained about.
Agreed
If they are going to go through the trouble of notifying that the water would be turned off, is it unreasonable to add notice about the noise, if it's known ahead of time? I don't think it's unreasonable.
My question is: would the complainer have done anything about it (hotel room, etc.) ?
To be fair...
I think if the city is going to give notice, it should then give FULL notice. Those affected should have all the details and take necessary action. They knew there'd be no water -- very good, that's most important. But maybe they could have stayed at a friend's place or booked a hotel room for the night. Sirens? Brief, perhaps not as loud, and won't shake the ground like bulldozers. Car engines? Few and far between, and nowhere near as loud. Airplanes? Also few at night, especially in the North End.
All that said; yes, suck it up and be glad you sleep during normal hours because you're not working when everyone else sleeps. But if the City of Boston is going to half ass notifications, why bother.
hello, poster
Check the city's own regulations on construction. This violates 'em.
Some Picture
That photo looks like a painting! If I didn't know better I'd think the complainer had been kept up all night at his window with an easel and brush.
Notice
I agree the city should have given notice about the noise. Guy says he has a small family - I imagine a night of trying to get a baby to sleep with a jack hammer outside the window. Not fun. If he knew beforehand he could have booked a hotel, made arrangements with a friend, etc. And to the busy world jab - I didn't realize common courtesy out the window when you live in the city hah.
More generators the better ,
More generators the better , you dont want those lads striking a gas pipe now and then getting yourselves out of bed. But , there is an organization ,
http://northendwaterfront.com , that seems to have voluminous information of the goings on there. But I offer this tip, if there are all sorts of colored lines and symbols on the sidewalks and streets, there going to be some digging. And if it is in the city , it is going to be complicated. You all want the toilets to flush now ,dont you ? I wonder if there are any cobblestones in the diggings?
Cobblestones? Not anymore
But if you want to see where they went, check craigslist.
i got a load or two from some
i got a load or two from some fill that had come from there years ago. I pulled them out , one by one . I used them , and they have since be re-used over again , going back to Boston . Craig wasnt around back then , i just got lucky. One man's tuna fish is another one's caviar.
Quick!
Someone call Brookline PD!
Seriously though, there is a huge difference between the sounds of the city and a full on overnight construction site in a residential neighborhood.
Um, no, it seems pretty
Um, no, it seems pretty reasonable to have some notice of this type of nightime work.
Although I do have to note the "young family" reference. Who cares? This would be disruptive to anyone.
Young family
Well, yes, but if the household is all adults none of them is likely to add to the uproar by crying all night. YMMV.
Yeah
And it's kind of difficult to get a toddler to use earplugs. Sheesh.
Agreed, but
I had the pleasure of working with a lot of the tonier urban parents, and they tended to drop the "young family" line to mean, "Nothing should go on outside of my child's schedule that might disrupt my child's schedule." If their kid happened to nap during our most popular kids' class, well...that was my fault for excluding their kid!
I lived near a construction site that started at 6 am, six days a week, for four months, shaking my apartment and filling it with sewer/diesel/tar fumes; a year later, my landlord decided to do a gut renovation on all of the apartments surrounding mine. I totally get their pain, it's awful, and I'd hate to do it with a fussy, exhausted baby. But yeah, I smell entitlement in that phrasing.
When my son cried all night I
When my son cried all night I didn't call the City.
But if you're already up from
But if you're already up from the ear-splitting noise of the construction, then who cares? Also, in my experience, the kids sleep through it, but it's the parents who are up all night worrying that the kids are going to wake up.
not unreasonable
I can definitely understand the complaint having lived in the North End for 8 years now. It's one thing to deal with the "city noises" that come from living downtown, but something completely different to have jackhammering going on overnight in a neighborhood without a single soft surface to absorb any of the noise. I can just about guarantee that it was at a "disturbance level" 2 blocks in each direction. Instead of crapping all over the person with the nerve to post an online complaint, how about you just ignore it? It seems that's much easier to ignore than a friggin jackhammer blasting all night.
I live on this intersection
I live on this intersection in the North End, as well....
1. They are being nice in their description of the construction noise. Started at 1am and lasted all the way through 5:30am (when I decided to stop looking up at my ceiling, and shower for work). LOUD!
2. No notice was given to me, whatsoever.
3. The rules are clear: The Boston Municipal Code (chapter 16, section 26) sets the general standard for noise that is unreasonable or excessive: louder than 50 decibels between the hours of 11:00 PM and 7:00 AM, or louder than 70 decibels at all other hours.
4. Further, garage pickup starts at 4am daily, another clear violation of city ordinance yet no recourse seems to be applied and members of city council continue to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye:
1.4.5 .TIMES RESTRICTED.
No dumpster shall be transported, emptied or serviced between the hours of 11:00 P.M. and 7:00
A.M. On any day, nor shall any mechanical, hydraulic or electrical loader, compactor, packer or
conveyor be utilized during such hours, all unless the Commissioner of Public Works in his sole
discretion, for good cause shown, shall permit.
The city continues to violate the ordinances voted on, approved, and implemented by themselves. The losers in all of this? The taxpayers and residents of the North End.
I'd make an exception if it
I'd make an exception if it was an emergency (for example, if nobody would have water until it got fixed, or something was in danger of collapsing if they waited from 1 AM to 7 AM).
But it doesn't sound like this was the case.