BOSTON:
I have long been interested in airplanes and airport operations and I find this discussion and the huge quantity of data that Senator Brownsberger has provided fascinating. This provides numerous insights into the details of air traffic management and flight operations and it is interesting to see the ways in which new technologies and traffic management strategies combine for various purposes.
But at the same time it is important to recognize that we would not be having this conversation if it were not for a very real problem to which all of this information is actually just not relevant. The impact of aircraft noise in the Belmont-Watertown area is real and substantial and has increased significantly recently due to the well-understood changes that Senator Brownsberger has so clearly explained. We should not become so consumed by the details of the traffic management techniques and the substantial challenges that airplane pilots and air traffic controllers face that we overlook the impact of their actions on the larger community in which they operate.
In an analogy that Senator Brownsberger has appropriately used, the routes that airplanes follow are like highways in the air. They have value and serve very legitimate purposes. But like highways on the ground, these aerial highways have impacts on people and the environment around them. We do not allow trucking and transportation companies to dictate the routes of cars and trucks through residential areas and it would be considered absurd if the trucking industry proposed building freeways through residential areas simply because doing so would reduce their own expenses or fuel consumption.
In fact, we had a very real example of such an effort in our community a few decades ago when the Boston Inner Ring highway system was proposed to go through Cambridge and Somerville and to connect Rt. 2 in the vicinity of Fresh Pond. This highway would have greatly improved the efficiency of roadway travel into Boston and Cambridge from the west. It might have been said to reduce fuel consumption and even overall noise levels due to the “concentration” of traffic to narrow areas. But it was rightly abandoned due to the devastating overall effects that it would have had on the community and the environment.
The new Logan Airport air traffic patterns are quite analogous to this abandoned terrestrial traffic proposal. They provide genuine technical benefits and clearly serve the interests of private commercial entities such as the airlines that benefit significantly from reduced fuel costs and other operational expenses. But the impact on the overall community is quite negative and in a democratic society the interests of a small number of private interests should never be allowed to trump those of the community as a whole.
The gist of the rationalizations that the FAA has provided and that Senator Brownsberger has so clearly compiled is that we in the Belmont-Watertown area should accept the significant increase in noise pollution and the impact that this has on our lives because doing so enables the airlines to fly more cheaply and profitably and avoids the inconveniences to customers and employees and the costs that would occur if airlines increased their passenger capacity without such changes to traffic patterns. The FAA RNAV data sheet that Senator Brownsberger provided makes this clear.
This is all completely rational, but it overlooks a principle that is often involved in public planning and which economists call “externalities.” An externality is a cost or impact that an activity or policy has but which is not accounted for in a cost/benefit analysis. The result is that the benefit of a policy appears to be greater or less than it really is because the cost of the “external” impact is not included in the calculations. Water pollution pumped downstream by factories and health impacts from chemicals in foods or poor product designs are examples of externalities that can impose significant costs on a community while the producer of the impact does not bear the costs themselves.
We are faced with such a problem in regard to airport noise. The justifications that the FAA has proposed simply amount to a request for the citizens of Belmont and Watertown to agree to aid in increasing the profits of the airline corporations. Of course we expect airport operations to place safety above all other concerns. The frequency and separation of flights over their prescribed routes for safety reasons inherently affects the costs of airline operations. The FAA has changed air traffic routes to reduce the costs and optional impacts that would otherwise occur from safely managing the air traffic. But reducing those costs is not itself a safety concern. It is a business concern the benefits of which flow mainly to the private corporations.
As a government agency that gets substantial support through taxes on these corporations, it is not surprising that the FAA would make such a proposal. But we in the community should see it for what it is and not be mislead by its obvious ignoring of the costs of community impact. We are being asked to accept those costs with very little benefit to ourselves.
Just as we would not accept a new freeway through Belmont and Watertown for the benefit of FedEx and UPS, we should not be expected to accept a new air traffic highway for the benefit of JetBlue and American Airlines.
I am a long-time resident of Belmont and have never objected to the aircraft overflights in the past. However, the recent changes have made these flights more frequent and their impact greatly more intrusive. It is this recent impact that concerns me and that rightly concerns many other citizens.
I have one technical comment. The FAA has introduced a seemingly objective measure of the noise impact in the DNL measurement and by seeming to quantify this impact with the numerical threshold of 65. But in reality this is a purely arbitrary metric. And since it explicitly reflects average noise levels it fails to accurately quantify the periodic nature of the impact of the overflights. The metric that I prefer is whether I can carry on a conversation at a normal and comfortable voice level with the person sitting next to me when an overflight occurs. I don’t know the decibel level at which this becomes impossible but quite frequently when an overflight occurs, conversation must stop. Not only does this noise intrude into conversation, but noise of such a volume is sufficient to intrude into other situations as well. These include sleeping and the legitimate enjoyment of a certain amount of quietude internal and external to one’s home. Such a noise level cannot be characterized as “background.” We in the community legitimately object to being subjected to this impact.
So the ultimate question, it seems to me, is what the overall impact of these higher noise levels is on the community and whether these negative impacts can in any way be justified by some larger societal (and not commercial) benefits. Since this is an aggregate phenomenon. the experience of a single individual is not sufficient to provide a measurement. But the discussion to now seems not to address this question but do have been diverted into some unrelated, although interesting, technical topics.
My own opinion is that this impact cannot be justified and that it is incumbent on our elected representatives continue to energetically oppose the current situation.
I greatly appreciate the diligence with which Senator Brownsberger has kept us all informed about this matter and support all of his and our other representatives’ efforts to resolve the problem.
BOSTON:
Thanks so much Will and all who made efforts. In my research on health and wellbeing I find repeatedly evidence of massively increased stress and a decrease in physical health due to loud industrial noise and fumes of all kinds including planes, leaf-blowers, weed-whackers, neighbors who love to use table saws outside, etc. etc. We are bombarded with noise, often, ironically, on the nicest weather days. We need nature, but if we go in our gardens or even on a balcony chances are any benefit will be negated by the neighbor with the table saw in his driveway or the cannon-sized leaf-blower in use by the other neighbor. Add jets overhead for hours and you’ve got a case of full-blown stress and anxiety, babies who wake early, mothers who never sleep, etc. We feel helpless to stop most of it, and helplessness leads to hopelessness which leads often to depression. Airplane noise if chronic enough slows children’s ability to learn and degrades their hearing even more than it does adults’ hearing. Government on all levels needs to pay even more attention, and frankly we all may be asking too much of air travel-trains, buses, etc. could lessen the load. Quieter, cleaner engines than even the new ones need to get here ASAP so I hope places like MIT make them a priority in their research. I’m happy to help with more on wellbeing and on noise research if you need it. (In my Watertown neighborhood houses are close together and the noise is often unbearable, and that’s even when the jets aren’t flying overhead. When they are it’s all the more hellish. Not only is it painful to be outside, it’s painful to be inside with the windows open. So we must shut ourselves in our hones with them closed-very sad). Please use my comments wherever you like if they can help. Thanks-Susan Cooke
PHOENIX:
Sorry to tell you this Folks, but our experience with the FAA here in Phoenix is that anything they say is nothing more than lip service to pacify you until you give up or - they believe - get used to the noise. They will NOT undo the damage they have done. They have stated that they will NOT go back to our old accepted flight paths. The NextGen process is being forcefully applied to communities all over the country. The FAA has taken our peaceful environments without our consent and does NOT intend to give them back to us. If anyone had previously told me that a govt agency could get away with doing such astounding wide-spread damage to our communities, and without impunity, I would never have believed it
CHICAGO:
This is also happening in Chicago where the Ohare expansion has planes now flying over homes, that were once flying over forest preserves and factories. They fly over twice in most cases to align with the one major runway which is now used rather than the many runways that used to share the take offs and landings. Additionally, they add more freight flights which are late night flights over homes. We can't use the City, because they wrote a law saying we can't use them for airport noise years ago. Now don't start with we should not have moved here. These homes have been here. My home was built in the 1900s. My friend's home is paid for (he's lived there for 50 years, before ohare was an international airport). he's sleeping in the basement with ear plugs. Home values.. forget it. We've been hoodwinked by the politicians .. and the airlines and now they are saying the need to study the noise levels in just until 2030. Then they will see if we need sound insulation. FAiR a local group is doing a great job. The OHare Noise CC is a huge problem.. Our Senator Quigley is trying.
PHOENIX:
Together With One Voice: this is our story; the story of a community, a city government and an airport coming together in one voice for one purpose. Have you ever tried to get four people around a dinner table to agree on something? Imagine then getting thousands of people to agree on something. Then imagine getting those thousands of people to share one voice.
On September 18th, 2014, a day that was surrounded by late summer storms something in the air changed. It wasn’t a gradual change. It was a change that rocked a community, shattering its sensibilities and its way of life. It was jet aircraft noise that disrupted, enraged and put into action a chain of events. On this day the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a change to flight paths out of Sky Harbor International Airport with no notice to the community. Our notice if you will was the wrenching sound of jet aircraft over our homes and over our neighbor's homes. This relentless noise determined to destroy much of how we defined our community, our City and our souls and it raked our emotions.
In the days, weeks and months ahead a community geared up and into action. This wasn't right what happened to us seemed to be what empowered us. Groups formed, individuals took action - all demanding an immediate solution. City government responded. Sky Harbor Airport came into the community. A unified voice took hold. Democracy and its principals were the strength behind us. The energy of thousands of people on the verge of hysteria - thousands of noise complaints were dutifully filed, neighborhood associations joined ranks, legal strategies were developed, and for many in the community it became daily work - all in the pursuit of restoring us to quiet skies.
The Mission Statement of The Federal Aviation Administration is, "Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world". The Mission Statement of our community is for the FAA to carry out their mission statement but quietly. The FAA soon learned this.
We then learned we were not alone. Other cities and communities around the country were as impacted and enraged as we. We received local and National media coverage. Our one voice grew stronger, and it grew louder. On the ground our mobilization stands taller, stands stronger and stands relentlessly against a formidable government bureaucracy. We saw through the finger-pointing keeping our one voice determined to be heard above all else. Emotions rose. And, our one voice became even stronger. And, our community stood firm.
Democracy was at work and it was on our side - we were beating the airline industry which drives $1.5 Trillion Dollars in the U.S. economy and its lobbyist as they shoveled hundreds of millions of dollars at our representatives in Washington. Our community mustered its strength, its friends and its foes and our City and our Airport to have one voice - our voice. I think what is most remarkable is how we came to have one voice, united and as loud and as relentless as jet aircraft noise is. This is the story of people who know the difference between what is right, and would not tolerate what is wrong. This is our story; a community with a rich and vibrant history that preserves and protects its historic heritage and its neighboring communities, charted the course of a Freeway and continues to fight for its airspace and gives rise to whom it chooses as its political leaders. This is our one voice. This is you, and this your neighbor.
Late in the afternoon on Friday February 23rd, 2015 the Federal Aviation Administration notified our City it will not return jet aircraft to its original procedures over the Salt River. I'm pretty sure on that evening our one voice said, no and though tired, grew even louder. Our one voice is your voice and you neighbors voice and together we stay determined.
I have long been interested in airplanes and airport operations and I find this discussion and the huge quantity of data that Senator Brownsberger has provided fascinating. This provides numerous insights into the details of air traffic management and flight operations and it is interesting to see the ways in which new technologies and traffic management strategies combine for various purposes.
But at the same time it is important to recognize that we would not be having this conversation if it were not for a very real problem to which all of this information is actually just not relevant. The impact of aircraft noise in the Belmont-Watertown area is real and substantial and has increased significantly recently due to the well-understood changes that Senator Brownsberger has so clearly explained. We should not become so consumed by the details of the traffic management techniques and the substantial challenges that airplane pilots and air traffic controllers face that we overlook the impact of their actions on the larger community in which they operate.
In an analogy that Senator Brownsberger has appropriately used, the routes that airplanes follow are like highways in the air. They have value and serve very legitimate purposes. But like highways on the ground, these aerial highways have impacts on people and the environment around them. We do not allow trucking and transportation companies to dictate the routes of cars and trucks through residential areas and it would be considered absurd if the trucking industry proposed building freeways through residential areas simply because doing so would reduce their own expenses or fuel consumption.
In fact, we had a very real example of such an effort in our community a few decades ago when the Boston Inner Ring highway system was proposed to go through Cambridge and Somerville and to connect Rt. 2 in the vicinity of Fresh Pond. This highway would have greatly improved the efficiency of roadway travel into Boston and Cambridge from the west. It might have been said to reduce fuel consumption and even overall noise levels due to the “concentration” of traffic to narrow areas. But it was rightly abandoned due to the devastating overall effects that it would have had on the community and the environment.
The new Logan Airport air traffic patterns are quite analogous to this abandoned terrestrial traffic proposal. They provide genuine technical benefits and clearly serve the interests of private commercial entities such as the airlines that benefit significantly from reduced fuel costs and other operational expenses. But the impact on the overall community is quite negative and in a democratic society the interests of a small number of private interests should never be allowed to trump those of the community as a whole.
The gist of the rationalizations that the FAA has provided and that Senator Brownsberger has so clearly compiled is that we in the Belmont-Watertown area should accept the significant increase in noise pollution and the impact that this has on our lives because doing so enables the airlines to fly more cheaply and profitably and avoids the inconveniences to customers and employees and the costs that would occur if airlines increased their passenger capacity without such changes to traffic patterns. The FAA RNAV data sheet that Senator Brownsberger provided makes this clear.
This is all completely rational, but it overlooks a principle that is often involved in public planning and which economists call “externalities.” An externality is a cost or impact that an activity or policy has but which is not accounted for in a cost/benefit analysis. The result is that the benefit of a policy appears to be greater or less than it really is because the cost of the “external” impact is not included in the calculations. Water pollution pumped downstream by factories and health impacts from chemicals in foods or poor product designs are examples of externalities that can impose significant costs on a community while the producer of the impact does not bear the costs themselves.
We are faced with such a problem in regard to airport noise. The justifications that the FAA has proposed simply amount to a request for the citizens of Belmont and Watertown to agree to aid in increasing the profits of the airline corporations. Of course we expect airport operations to place safety above all other concerns. The frequency and separation of flights over their prescribed routes for safety reasons inherently affects the costs of airline operations. The FAA has changed air traffic routes to reduce the costs and optional impacts that would otherwise occur from safely managing the air traffic. But reducing those costs is not itself a safety concern. It is a business concern the benefits of which flow mainly to the private corporations.
As a government agency that gets substantial support through taxes on these corporations, it is not surprising that the FAA would make such a proposal. But we in the community should see it for what it is and not be mislead by its obvious ignoring of the costs of community impact. We are being asked to accept those costs with very little benefit to ourselves.
Just as we would not accept a new freeway through Belmont and Watertown for the benefit of FedEx and UPS, we should not be expected to accept a new air traffic highway for the benefit of JetBlue and American Airlines.
I am a long-time resident of Belmont and have never objected to the aircraft overflights in the past. However, the recent changes have made these flights more frequent and their impact greatly more intrusive. It is this recent impact that concerns me and that rightly concerns many other citizens.
I have one technical comment. The FAA has introduced a seemingly objective measure of the noise impact in the DNL measurement and by seeming to quantify this impact with the numerical threshold of 65. But in reality this is a purely arbitrary metric. And since it explicitly reflects average noise levels it fails to accurately quantify the periodic nature of the impact of the overflights. The metric that I prefer is whether I can carry on a conversation at a normal and comfortable voice level with the person sitting next to me when an overflight occurs. I don’t know the decibel level at which this becomes impossible but quite frequently when an overflight occurs, conversation must stop. Not only does this noise intrude into conversation, but noise of such a volume is sufficient to intrude into other situations as well. These include sleeping and the legitimate enjoyment of a certain amount of quietude internal and external to one’s home. Such a noise level cannot be characterized as “background.” We in the community legitimately object to being subjected to this impact.
So the ultimate question, it seems to me, is what the overall impact of these higher noise levels is on the community and whether these negative impacts can in any way be justified by some larger societal (and not commercial) benefits. Since this is an aggregate phenomenon. the experience of a single individual is not sufficient to provide a measurement. But the discussion to now seems not to address this question but do have been diverted into some unrelated, although interesting, technical topics.
My own opinion is that this impact cannot be justified and that it is incumbent on our elected representatives continue to energetically oppose the current situation.
I greatly appreciate the diligence with which Senator Brownsberger has kept us all informed about this matter and support all of his and our other representatives’ efforts to resolve the problem.
BOSTON:
Thanks so much Will and all who made efforts. In my research on health and wellbeing I find repeatedly evidence of massively increased stress and a decrease in physical health due to loud industrial noise and fumes of all kinds including planes, leaf-blowers, weed-whackers, neighbors who love to use table saws outside, etc. etc. We are bombarded with noise, often, ironically, on the nicest weather days. We need nature, but if we go in our gardens or even on a balcony chances are any benefit will be negated by the neighbor with the table saw in his driveway or the cannon-sized leaf-blower in use by the other neighbor. Add jets overhead for hours and you’ve got a case of full-blown stress and anxiety, babies who wake early, mothers who never sleep, etc. We feel helpless to stop most of it, and helplessness leads to hopelessness which leads often to depression. Airplane noise if chronic enough slows children’s ability to learn and degrades their hearing even more than it does adults’ hearing. Government on all levels needs to pay even more attention, and frankly we all may be asking too much of air travel-trains, buses, etc. could lessen the load. Quieter, cleaner engines than even the new ones need to get here ASAP so I hope places like MIT make them a priority in their research. I’m happy to help with more on wellbeing and on noise research if you need it. (In my Watertown neighborhood houses are close together and the noise is often unbearable, and that’s even when the jets aren’t flying overhead. When they are it’s all the more hellish. Not only is it painful to be outside, it’s painful to be inside with the windows open. So we must shut ourselves in our hones with them closed-very sad). Please use my comments wherever you like if they can help. Thanks-Susan Cooke
PHOENIX:
Sorry to tell you this Folks, but our experience with the FAA here in Phoenix is that anything they say is nothing more than lip service to pacify you until you give up or - they believe - get used to the noise. They will NOT undo the damage they have done. They have stated that they will NOT go back to our old accepted flight paths. The NextGen process is being forcefully applied to communities all over the country. The FAA has taken our peaceful environments without our consent and does NOT intend to give them back to us. If anyone had previously told me that a govt agency could get away with doing such astounding wide-spread damage to our communities, and without impunity, I would never have believed it
CHICAGO:
This is also happening in Chicago where the Ohare expansion has planes now flying over homes, that were once flying over forest preserves and factories. They fly over twice in most cases to align with the one major runway which is now used rather than the many runways that used to share the take offs and landings. Additionally, they add more freight flights which are late night flights over homes. We can't use the City, because they wrote a law saying we can't use them for airport noise years ago. Now don't start with we should not have moved here. These homes have been here. My home was built in the 1900s. My friend's home is paid for (he's lived there for 50 years, before ohare was an international airport). he's sleeping in the basement with ear plugs. Home values.. forget it. We've been hoodwinked by the politicians .. and the airlines and now they are saying the need to study the noise levels in just until 2030. Then they will see if we need sound insulation. FAiR a local group is doing a great job. The OHare Noise CC is a huge problem.. Our Senator Quigley is trying.
PHOENIX:
Together With One Voice: this is our story; the story of a community, a city government and an airport coming together in one voice for one purpose. Have you ever tried to get four people around a dinner table to agree on something? Imagine then getting thousands of people to agree on something. Then imagine getting those thousands of people to share one voice.
On September 18th, 2014, a day that was surrounded by late summer storms something in the air changed. It wasn’t a gradual change. It was a change that rocked a community, shattering its sensibilities and its way of life. It was jet aircraft noise that disrupted, enraged and put into action a chain of events. On this day the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a change to flight paths out of Sky Harbor International Airport with no notice to the community. Our notice if you will was the wrenching sound of jet aircraft over our homes and over our neighbor's homes. This relentless noise determined to destroy much of how we defined our community, our City and our souls and it raked our emotions.
In the days, weeks and months ahead a community geared up and into action. This wasn't right what happened to us seemed to be what empowered us. Groups formed, individuals took action - all demanding an immediate solution. City government responded. Sky Harbor Airport came into the community. A unified voice took hold. Democracy and its principals were the strength behind us. The energy of thousands of people on the verge of hysteria - thousands of noise complaints were dutifully filed, neighborhood associations joined ranks, legal strategies were developed, and for many in the community it became daily work - all in the pursuit of restoring us to quiet skies.
The Mission Statement of The Federal Aviation Administration is, "Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world". The Mission Statement of our community is for the FAA to carry out their mission statement but quietly. The FAA soon learned this.
We then learned we were not alone. Other cities and communities around the country were as impacted and enraged as we. We received local and National media coverage. Our one voice grew stronger, and it grew louder. On the ground our mobilization stands taller, stands stronger and stands relentlessly against a formidable government bureaucracy. We saw through the finger-pointing keeping our one voice determined to be heard above all else. Emotions rose. And, our one voice became even stronger. And, our community stood firm.
Democracy was at work and it was on our side - we were beating the airline industry which drives $1.5 Trillion Dollars in the U.S. economy and its lobbyist as they shoveled hundreds of millions of dollars at our representatives in Washington. Our community mustered its strength, its friends and its foes and our City and our Airport to have one voice - our voice. I think what is most remarkable is how we came to have one voice, united and as loud and as relentless as jet aircraft noise is. This is the story of people who know the difference between what is right, and would not tolerate what is wrong. This is our story; a community with a rich and vibrant history that preserves and protects its historic heritage and its neighboring communities, charted the course of a Freeway and continues to fight for its airspace and gives rise to whom it chooses as its political leaders. This is our one voice. This is you, and this your neighbor.
Late in the afternoon on Friday February 23rd, 2015 the Federal Aviation Administration notified our City it will not return jet aircraft to its original procedures over the Salt River. I'm pretty sure on that evening our one voice said, no and though tired, grew even louder. Our one voice is your voice and you neighbors voice and together we stay determined.
COMMENTS FROM BOSTON, CHICAGO AND PHOENIX RESIDENTS RE: NEXTGEN.
