Carles Guillot, a 42-year-old financial services entrepreneur who lives on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, was awakened early on a weekend morning by workers wielding a jackhammer to repair the roadway nine floors below.
“I understand the need to work, but it’s the timing that’s not good,” he said of the noisy pre-breakfast intrusion. “Jackhammers — I can’t think of a worse noise.” Pneumatic Coal Mining Rock Drill
Nobody who lives in New York will ever mistake it for Walden Pond, what with its earsplitting police sirens, screeching subway wheels, beeping backup truck alarms and a cacophony of thunderous mechanical equipment that the city’s construction boom has elevated to a peak.
Keep covering your ears, New York, although help may be on the way. While most contractors still rely on the clangorous pneumatic drills driven by compressed air that were invented over 150 years ago, some are experimenting with new electric jackhammers that are demonstrably quieter.
City officials are close to embracing regulations that would encourage contractors and construction crews to switch to the quieter models — at least at night.
“It’s a result of an outcry from the public,” said Alyssa Preston, deputy director of air and noise policies for the Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Environmental Compliance.
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