Re(2): Fwd: Next to the highway
From: Roger Diggle (digglemacline.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 95 19:03 CST
On 1/30/95 at 2:55 AM, evanh [at] sco.COM wrote:

> 
> > In the specific case of the Peninsula project, the institutional
> > underpinning of the conspiracy is Caltrans, which persists in
> > adding more lanes to their highways rather than building the
> > soundwalls that >>most people would prefer.<<
> 
> I agree with almost all of your message, but I couldn't let this
> go by without saying how much I _hate_ soundwalls.  Hate, hate, hate.
> [snip]
> Soundwalls make a freeway
> look like a cattle chute in a slaughterhouse, sterile yet vicious,
> completely cut off from any reality beyond the roadway.  All they
> need is advertisements and the landscape of Gilliam's _Brazil_
> has come true.
> 
> Trees and hedges do a pretty good a job of acoustically insulating
> a road, and they aren't inhuman.  They do take time to grow,
> unfortunately, but if it was my house going up next to a road, I'd
> resign myself to putting up with the noise for the few years it would
> take, and save the motorists from the blight of another soundwall.
> If I needed the wall immediately, I'd think about an earthen berm.
> A soundwall might be all I could afford, but it'd be my last choice.


Alas, trees and hedges provide very poor acoustic isolation.
I dearly wish it were otherwise.
I'd go for the berm if there's room, else it's walls or noise.

Never ascribe to malice what can perfectly well be explained as ignorance.

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