Do you ride BART? I do. Daily.
And I hate it. It is by far the loudest most obnoxious experience I regularly put myself through.
Am I the only one?
Frequently I find myself glancing around with a furrowed brow and see people attempting to hold a conversation or even *gasp* talk on the phone. Meanwhile, every time I mash the ‘volume up’ button on my phone I get a government mandated warning.
I travel under the bay - Embarcadero to West Oakland. At some points under the bay or when returning from The Mission there are stretches of what I’ll refer to as a ‘Satan-shitting-a-cactus’ noise that makes me hate my commute.
What a fine way to start and end a work day!
Well, how much noise?
tl;dr Way too much.
I purchased a digital sound level meter that would log the sound levels. This one to be exact: the REED SD-4023. It works great and saves data to an SD card. For the last few months, when on BART, I’ve recorded the sound levels (and some audio) during my commute.
When recording, I’ve tried to stay near the door. Here is an 8-minute recording to give you an idea. It is not that fun to listen to. I’d suggest listening to music on a second set of ear-buds under your BART sound playing headphones. Here is what an 8 minute BART ride under the bay looks like:
What did the above experience tell me? The average dB level was ~90 dB. The maximum (on this particular trip) was 129.2 dB. This is equivalent to running a chainsaw next to your ear. Nice. The highest I’ve recorded to date is 129.8; only 0.2 dBs lower than the meter maximum. I suspect the dB levels are even higher.
New York, New York
In a study run in NYC about 10 years ago by The New York Times,
On subway platforms, the mean maximum noise level was 94 decibels. The highest level, 106 decibels, was recorded in Union Square station, and 12 percent of all platforms in the system exceeded 100 decibels. The maximum safe exposure duration at 85 decibels is 45 minutes, according to the E.P.A.; above 105, it is 30 seconds.
Inside the trains, the racket was even louder. One-fifth of the lines exceeded 100 decibels, a level that can be sustained safely for 90 seconds, and two-thirds exceeded 90 decibels. The E.P.A. maintains that a 90-decibel level can be sustained for 15 minutes without causing significant hearing damage.
and heads rolled in NYC!
Probably not, but it makes me question why we’d consider giving 3.5 billion dollars to this organization? No way. Give half to @elonmusk and a few of his best engineers, businessmen and solutions architect and I suspect we’ll have a better solution within’ a year.
So, I decided to keep pulling Ariadne’s thread here and see what else I could do with this kind of data. Hours on the subway and thousands of samples later…
- Standing next to the doors is the worst
- The front of a train is quieter
- Slower trains are quieter
- Empty trains are quieter
- That being said, no train is what I’d actually refer to as “quiet”
- Average was around 90 dB (not good)
- Maximum dB I recorded was around 129.8. Values were saved every second to an SD card.
- Acetaminophen works for headaches
Sound Maps and 3D
Well, this ended up turning into a bit of a thing for me. Sorry wife and new baby.
I ended up working with the very talented @seacloud9, to turn this entire data-set into a collaborative real-time performance.
Or as @seacloud9 coined the experience, “BART tripping”.
3D Web Fest
[We demoed] it at 3DWebFest this [past] Wednesday (6/15/16) in San Francisco @ Fort Mason.
This year the 3D Web Fest partnered with CODAME, all attendee fees will be 100% donated to support CODAME ART+TECH mission.
Bring your ear plugs.
Veni Vidi Vici
3D Web Fest was a smashing success. You can find the code onGithub including a sound level sample and associated recording.
We presented a real-time Android/iOS experience that allowed everyone in the audience to join into a virtual BART car.
dB levels and an average sound frequency were pushed to all participants via Firebase allowing for dynamic synchronized visualizations. Users position and rotation were also pushed to all other users. We had 147 users in a single BART VR car at our peak.
The louder the recording was, the more unpleasant the experience was (as intended). It seemed to be pretty unpleasant for the audience which was the original intent. BART is a horrible user experience. I hope our wonderful audience understood this.
@SFBART
SFBART has since reached out. They have some solutions in the work it seems:
“Dampers to minimize noise as will new trains & ongoing track grinding. See http://ow.ly/A60L301DHQh & http://ow.ly/2zE9301DHQW.”
This has been a known issue for 20 VERY LOUD YEARS.
