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GREENSBORO — A long-awaited meeting on loop noise Thursday evening was itself noisy at times and, as predicted, frustrating for residents living near the huge bypass.

Several hundred residents came seeking noise-reduction walls or some other effective remedy to tamp down what one called "roaring trucks, singing tires and the echo effect."

But while agreeing road noise is unpleasant, representatives from the state Department of Transportation told the crowd that, basically, they were out of luck. Noise experts had studied the road correctly before it was built, put sound barriers in all appropriate places and a "vegetative screen" or other landscaping was all that could be offered now.

The overflow audience in Pilot Elementary School's gymnasium voiced its displeasure, interrupting the presentation a times with pointed questions, comments, and sometimes sarcastic and rueful laughter.

In one form or another, the question of how the road known locally as "Painter Boulevard" morphed into a massive interstate was raised several times.

"Every opportunity we had, when people referred to it as Painter Boulevard, we would say it's going to be I-40 and the western loop," DOT hearing officer Ed Lewis said.

"Boulevard is just easier to explain away than an interstate," one man called out.

Noise walls have been constructed beside only a few neighborhoods and all those homes were built before 1996, the date the road's current route was declared publicly, DOT officials said.

DOT policy prevents residents living in neighborhoods built after that time from being considered for sound barriers retroactively, they said.
"DOT does not have jurisdiction over what's built next to the highway," state noise analyst Greg Smith said. "That's a municipal issue. It was built with full knowledge that the highway was to be there."

In some cases, DOT found areas where noise levels were high enough to justify a wall, but there were too few houses there in 1996 to make a wall feasible.

Smith and Lewis said DOT could not bend its policies because they stemmed from requirements by the Federal Highway Administration, which paid 80 percent of the road's cost.

They said DOT could plant landscaping to provide a visual screen, but even that would be centered in neighborhoods that were built before 1996 but which did not qualify for a noise wall.

Greensboro City Council member Robbie Perkins said he would urge the council to approve additional landscaping for neighborhoods that DOT could not help with state or federal money.

The meeting was the culmination of a process that began shortly after the loop opened Feb. 21, after people in neighborhoods along the 7.5-mile route began complaining the traffic volume and noise woes were far beyond anything state or city officials had suggested during the planning stages.

DOT leaders said in early April that they would take another look at the project to be sure they had followed proper procedures.

Lewis and other DOT representatives sought to run the meeting with a step-by-step review of scientific sound analysis and of governmental policies to reduce road noise, but residents grew impatient with the slow pace.

Residents went away disappointed, but not ready to throw in the towel. Many had signed one of the petitions that were circulating, demanding that either more noise walls be built or that something else be done so residents could get a decent night's sleep.

"We just want our normal life back," Roland Road resident Judy Ritter said.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com