Photo: AFP
If you live in New York City, you’ve grown accustomed to certain noises at night. Some of them, you have no control over: an ambulance siren, an airplane passing over head, a stray dog howling at the moon. But what about the neighbor down the block who thinks 11:55pm is the perfect time to race down the street with the loud muffler on his souped-up sports car?
The City Council is set to vote this week on the installation of “noise cameras”, which would target a loud vehicle, take a picture of the license plate, and send the offending vehicle owner a ticket. City Councilman Joe Borelli (R-NY 51st) is among the council members who support the bill. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to discuss why he’s raising his voice in support of the noise-reduction cameras.
“This is one of those funny laws that I kind of tend to see the logic on,” Borelli told Berman and Jesse Weber, sitting in for Riedel. “If you’re insecure about yourself, and you need a loud machine to make you feel good, that’s not my problem. So, we do have a law on the books about how much [sic] decibels your exhaust can make. If you go over that, I’m actually fine with the noise cameras, because this is a problem I deal with quite a bit.”
Borelli went in the other direction, however, when discussing another automotive plan the City Council is pushing: congestion pricing. “For Staten Island it actually will make worse air quality even worse, when you talk about how cars will be rerouted and diverted to avoid the $15 toll, especially trucks. What happened in London is (that) London is actually more congested today than it was in 1999, right before this went into effect. The only difference is now you, average Joe, are less likely to have a car and more likely to pay a company like Uber or a taxi driver to take you on the same trip that you were able to do yourself.”
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