Noise Project Policy Proposals

“It is hereby declared to be the policy of the city to prohibit unnecessary, excessive, and offensive noise from all sources subject to its police power, for the sole purpose of securing and promoting the public health, comfort, safety, and welfare of the citizenry.”
— Providence municipal code (Chapter 16, Article III)

A Public Noise Policy • Measure noise • Public education • Deterrence • Recidivism

Modernize Enforcement: Best practices • Technology • Equipment • Civilian officers

Step Zero: A Public and Proactive Noise Policy

Any modern municipality of Providence’s size and stature should have a comprehensive, proactive, and publicly posted noise policy — not an effectively meaningless policy declaration like the one above (which has been routinely ignored by mayors and the City Council itself), aspirational statements about addressing the issue, or internal policies known only to the inner circle at City Hall.

Publicly announcing Providence’s operational noise policy would communicate to residents and noise makers alike that city authorities are serious about reducing noise, are actively engaged in doing so, and are accountable to the public for the results (or lack thereof) of those efforts.

At a minimum, an active municipal noise policy should include:

  • Declaring excessive noise a significant public health threat like unaffordable housing, lead waterpipes, and other issues the city is actively addressing for the well-being of its residents.
  • Delineating specific noise-reduction measures (see examples below) that the city government is either already implementing or planning to implement to address the most prevalent vehicular, residential, and commercial noise sources — and publicly designate a civilian official to implement them.1
  • Actively measuring the effectiveness of its noise-reduction efforts and report the results to the public on a regular basis — both things that candidate Brett Smiley said he would do if elected mayor.
  • Working with the Rhode Island Departments of Health (RIDOH) and Environmental Management (RIDEM) — neither of which currently does anything to measure or otherwise address noise — along with non-profit organizations, the Providence Public School District, neighborhood associations, and city residents.

Two years into his term, Mayor Brett Smiley’s administration hasn’t done any of those things. But if Providence residents don‘t know what the city is actually doing to address noise, how can they evaluate whether it’s succeeding or failing?

Noise Policy, Part 1: Measure, Inform, and Enforce / Deter

Measure Noise in the City

Just as cities around the world take steps to measure the extent of air pollution and other health and environmental issues, Providence should measure sound levels throughout the city on an ongoing basis — especially in residential neighborhoods, which under city ordinances have lower noise limits — to see how loud they are throughout day, on different days, and at various times of year, and by extension how effective city noise-reduction efforts actually are.

Those sound-level readings should be made public (i.e., not require journalists and / or non-profit groups to file APRA requests for it2) — along with data on noise complaints to both PVD311 and police — so residents and visitors can better understand personal experience and degree of exposure to potentially unhealthy noise levels in the broader context of the city-wide soundscape. As with other forms of air pollution, people have a right to data about the environmental conditions they live, work, and socialize in.

It’s worth noting that, in his response to the Noise Project’s survey of 2022 candidates for Providence mayor, then-candidate Brett Smiley said:

“As part of a review of the noise level in our city and improved enforcement, noise should be measured on an ongoing basis in order to produce consistent data. Like any other issue we would study, we need the technology and the policies in place to properly measure this issue in order to make the best decision for our community.”

The survey also asked if, as mayor, his administration would issue annual reports on noise levels in Providence and the specific polices and actions the city government is taking to address them. Candidate Smiley responded that, “[R]egular reporting and data collection are important to the decision-making process.”

As of June 2024, however, the city is neither measuring noise nor reporting on its specific polices and actions to reduce it, other than occasional statements to the media.

Provide Hearing Tests for City Residents

As part of its efforts to collect sound-related data, the city should institute a program to conduct free hearing tests for residents — and especially those under eighteen — to determine whether exposure to high volume levels has resulted in permanent hearing loss. Diminished hearing capacity, particularly among pre-teens, would serve as a clear and dire indication of exposure to excessive sound levels for extended periods of time, and provide an opportunity to address them early on.

Conduct an Ongoing Public-Education Campaign

Providence conducts outreach campaigns to encourage residents’ participation in and compliance with various public policies such garbage collection, recycling, and winter snow shoveling. A city-wide initiative to reduce excessive noise must include a campaign to educate the public about:

  • The adverse health effects of excessive noise on residents’ health — This should involve all of the city’s outreach and communications tools and platforms. In addition to protecting children by educating their parents, the negative long-term effects of noise should also be part of the Providence Public School District’s health and environmental curriculums.
  • The municipal and state laws that regulate sound levels — Residents are often misinformed about what local and state laws allow, especially with regard to noise on private property. The city government frequently cites this lack of information as a cause for noise infractions, yet it does nothing to publicize sound limits.
  • Providence’s official policies to reduce noise levels, especially in residential areas — The city needs to actively promote its noise-reduction policies to the public, as it does with other policy initiatives, rather than simply implementing them behind the scenes. Changing the city’s dysfunctional culture of noise requires public officials to be unabashed in publicizing the city’s abatement activities.

Deter Unhealthy Noise by Consistently Enforcing Existing Laws

Violating municipal sound limits is a non-violent infraction that rarely poses an imminent danger to city residents,3 but excessive noise does affect the long-term health of everyone who is exposed to it — whether or not they know or acknowledge it — and should be proactively addressed on a broad social level, rather than a reactive, incident-by-incident basis.4

No areas of the city should simply be declared “loud neighborhoods” where “nobody cares” about noise — not least because they do. Moreover, without enforcement there is no deterrence, so a permissive response to excessive noise ensures it will not only continue but get worse, as both those making the noise and those exposed to it realize city officials have turned a deaf ear to it. And talking about noise without actually addressing it just makes residents more cynical.

All Providence officials and employees — including the police, Board of Licenses, and other executive branch and City Council members and staff — should be familiar with city noise ordinances and policies (starting with the declaration at the top of this page), and noise denialism by individual officials or staff should be refuted as contrary to public health, municipal law, and formal city policy.

Among the most basic components of noise enforcement are to publicize the process for reporting excessive noise — and the steps the city takes in response to noise complaints — as well as informing residents about the outcome of their complaints. This would be a distinct contrast to the current opaque and subjective procedural “black box” that residents neither understand nor trust.

After receiving a single, one-time (not daily / weekly / monthly) warning, those who repeatedly violate the city’s sound-level ordinance should receive a citation. The city should allow first-time infractions to be resolved by providing the option to take a city-provided hearing test within 15 days of the date of the citation. The results will help to inform the noise-maker and public health officials about the degree to which exposure to excessive noise is causing permanent hearing loss among residents.

Target noise recidivism / impunity

One obvious and yet seemingly rare enforcement measure would be to identify and address the proportionately small number of “repeat offenders” who generate a disproportionate share of unhealthy and unnecessary noise in Providence with relative impunity.

The city‘s existing Nuisance Task Force is specifically designed for such an effort — its official definition of a nuisance is “any property that, by virtue of condition, activity, or situation, poses a threat to the health, safety, or welfare of the community or that otherwise interferes with the quiet use and enjoyment of nearby properties” — yet seems under-utilized for that purpose.

The Nuisance Task Force includes representatives from the City Solicitor’s Office, the Police Department, the Fire Department, the Department of Inspection and Standards and the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office.

Noise Policy, Part 2: Modernize Noise Reduction

In addition to developing, implementing, and promoting an active, comprehensive, and effective public policy to reduce unhealthy noise levels as described above, there are several measures the city should take to move its noise-reduction efforts beyond the traditional strategies that have not kept up with current realities.

Learn from Best Practices

Urban noise is a global issue, and cities around the world have developed innovative measures to address a wide range of noise pollution sources — in most cases, to a far greater degree than those in the U.S. Providence should study the most effective means being employed in other U.S. and international cities, seek their advice and learn from their experiences, and adapt the most effective practices to our specific needs.5

Utilize Existing Technology

Much as technology has helped address speeding and red-light running, technical means to deter mobile noise sources such as vehicles with modified mufflers or over-amplified stereos has emerged in recent years. Providence and other Rhode Island and U.S. cities already uses speed cameras to deter dangerous driving near schools, and should consider the adoption of similar “noise cameras” in areas prone to excessive noise from vehicles.

These stationary devices are triggered when passing vehicles generate noise above a certain decibel threshold, and take a picture of the offending vehicle’s license plate. The owner or driver is then issued a ticket for non-compliance with noise statutes. As with current photo tickets, these would be reviewed by a sworn police officer and be subject to challenge in a due-process administrative hearing.

Enforce / Enact Laws on Deliberate Noise-Producing Equipment

The use of noise-amplifying “after market” mufflers (e.g., glass pack and straight-pipe exhausts, exhaust tips, etc) is already a violation of both Providence municipal code (Sec. 16-99) and Rhode Island state law, yet they’re openly sold and professionally installed in the city and state — despite the fact that they can’t legally be used here. (If you know of other such openly sold illegal devices, please tell us.)

Prohibiting modified muffler sales — and actually enforcing such a ban — obviously won’t prevent offenders from buying them elsewhere, but it would make the costs and effort of doing so greater, and thus inhibit their use to some degree. Combined with increased enforcement of local and state vehicle exhaust laws,6 a sales ban would help curtail one of the most prevalent and indefensible sources of excessive and unnecessary noise that Providence residents are exposed to on a recurrent basis.

Similarly, cities, states, and other communities across the U.S. have banned the use of gas-fueled leafblowers and other uses of extremely loud, polluting, and unhealthy two-stroke engines such as lawnmowers and other landscaping equipment, scooters, mini-bikes / go-karts, as a way of reducing both noise and air pollution.7

Traditional fossil-fueled landscaping equipment and mobility platforms are steadily being eclipsed by electric versions, and a declining market for the former would hasten the transition to the latter. Providence should enact such a ban in phases, along with an incentive program to encourage equipment operators to transition from polluting tools to cleaner and quieter electric models.

Re-Imagine Noise Enforcement

In the context of the national discussion around re-imagining law enforcement methods and philosophy, Providence could establish a small group of unarmed, civilian “noise reduction officers” (NROs) whose role would be to observe and cite noise violations, in the same way that traffic-control officers issue tickets to illegally parked cars in many U.S. and international cities.

NROs would be based in neighborhoods, be assisted by audio-video technology such as noise meters, and be able to call for police assistance if and when needed. As with parking tickets, anyone who received a noise citation would be able to challenge it in a due-process administrative hearing. NROs would help to lower the police profile in communities, and their single-issue focus could allow more opportunities for non-judicial resolution of noise issues.

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1 The continued lack of such a policy indicates that, much like his predecessors, Mayor Smiley considers noise to be at worst a public (and political) inconvenience akin to parking or litter control, rather than a threat to the health and well-being of residents and visitors. This half-hearted and inconsistent approach is unlikely to significantly reduce the prevalence of excessive noise over the long term — to say nothing of changing the systemic and dysfunctional culture that enables and even encourages it — and, like the noise policy statement at the top of the page, seems more performative than serious.

2 As Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha has admonished the state and municipal governments to do.

3 At sufficiently high volume, however, even very brief exposure to sound can permanently damage hearing — especially for children. Given repeated instances of loud noise levels that Project volunteers have observed in the city, some residents have almost certainly lost some hearing, which may at least partly explain their continued insistence on excessive volume levels.

4 This means city officials — including but not limited to the police — should address vehicular, residential, and commercial noise sources before receiving citizen complaints. Police and other city officials should act to curtail excessive noise on their own initiative, as they are legally authorized to do under city law (see Sec. 16-109), rather than ignoring it in the absence of a complaint. The City Council deliberately changed municipal law to allow police and others to pro-actively address noise.

5 Newport, RI, beat Providence to the punch in regard to noise cameras, even though the capital’s noise levels are far worse — demonstrating that political will, rather than technology, is usually the most important aspect of effective public policy.

6 Given that those who violate noise laws effectively “announce” their non-compliance, it should not be difficult to find them, as demonstrated by the city’s crackdown on illegal fireworks in the Spring / Summer of 2020, and since then. Locating noise-makers has never been the issue in Providence — bothering to even look for them has (see footnote 5 above).

7 Two-stroke engines also represent a serious threat to the long-term hearing and respiratory health of their operators, unless professional-grade earplugs and masks are worn properly and consistently during their use, which is relatively rare.