Brian Rudman: DJs mixed with V8s don't equal vibrant culture

COMMENT

I suspect there'll be a sparse turnout for the radio jocks' self-promoting, pro-noise demonstration in Aotea Square tomorrow morning. One needs a social conscience to get out of bed and on to the street with placards aloft, and there's obviously not much of that among those demanding the right to deafen neighbours with amplified music.

One of the pro-noise campaigners, Thane Kirby, tries to make his crusade sound worthy by claiming Auckland City's noise controls severely limited the number of places where people can listen to music.

Not true. What limits the number of dance and loud music venues is the unwillingness of bar owners or event promoters to spend a few bucks installing adequate sound insulation, so that only those who have paid to have their eardrums pounded suffer.

Centro Lounge in downtown Wyndham St, which had some equipment seized by the noise police last weekend after due warning, is just one in a string of venues which, over the years, have thumbed their noses at their neighbours and eventually copped the consequences.

The Temple, now closed, was another that springs to mind, along with a bar or three at the Viaduct Basin which seem to specialise in making nights hell for their residential neighbours.

What surprises me is that the council, instead of fighting a rear-guard action once the noise starts blaring out of a venue's every orifice, doesn't battle the problem in its building codes and licensing procedures. Why doesn't it insist that such places of entertainment are fully sound-proofed, with suitable air-locks at doors and windows, so there's no leakage out, or for that matter, in. Then everyone would be happy. The city's own Town Hall is proof that such remedial measures are achievable.

Of course DJs are not the only ones wanting to deafen the city. Mayor John Banks and his V8 race car cronies are at it too.

The glossy promotional document being circulated to neighbours about the proposed Victoria Park street race reveals that the headline V8 Supercar vehicles will operate at 95 decibels, racing twice a day for about 50 minutes each time. The cars in other races "will operate with street-legal muffler systems".

My research shows 95 decibels as being somewhere between a lawnmower and a chainsaw in loudness. Auckland City's website says it's equivalent to the sound of an oxyacetylene welder. In a workshop you'd be wise to wear ear-protection at that level and you'd risk ear damage if exposed to this level of noise for more than four hours.

It's 20 decibels above the city's construction noise controls for the CBD. Why, you have to ask, do proponents think these are acceptable noise levels to inflict on captive office workers and residents, who through no wish of their own are trapped along the race track?

Ironically, the V8s will also break the anti-boy racer regulations rushed into law following the clamouring for action by, among others, Mayor Banks.

In particular, the Land Transport Safety Authority sprang into action and altered its rules for measuring the acceptability of modified car exhaust and silencer systems. For a year now, the police can "green sticker" a car off the road if "the noise output is noticeably and significantly higher than it would have been when the vehicle was manufacturered with its original exhaust system".

Because of the difficulties in interpreting this, one report has police ordering any car louder than 85 decibels off the road. Now wouldn't that put a bit of a dampener on proceedings around Victoria Park, in the unlikely event of the proposed nightmare getting that far. The brochure has as good as said that the V8 supercars are not "street legal".

I hope the city's noise consultants are asked to prepare an impact report for the V8 resource consent hearing.

As noise proponent Thane Kirby says, the council is actively promoting Auckland as a vibrant, cultural city. For him, that's justification to let rip with his sound systems and damn the neighbours. But that's hardly the caring, sharing sort of cultural vibrancy that most of us - even Mr Kirby, I suspect - really want.

It sounds more like living inside the biblical hell-hole of Babel.