I spent two and a half hours at the SFO Noise Abatement Office as a follow-up to the questions I asked at the last Court session about noise data. My host, David Ong, was very helpful-- cordial, informative and curious to hear about my concerns. One couldn't ask for more at this point in the proceedings. We discussed the arrival and departure routes at length, using their system to graph sets of data for specific dates and windows of time including my least favorite-12 am to 4 am. It turns out that late night departures are not predominantly Asian flights or cargo, but often head to Chicago, Detroit, etc to make early morning connections. We reviewed the timing around the Runway Safety project that added a new runway surface at the ends of the north-south runways and noted when they reopened August 10, 2014 as you can see from the graph below with the green V-shaped departures reappearing on 1L and 1R. One theory is after a summer without traffic on those runways the reopening may have sounded louder to residents. I can't really agree with as a cause of our distress now simply because it was five years ago, but I'm sure it had some short-term effect in 2014.
We also discussed how the international terminal Gate G which has a lot of Boeing 777 "heavy" traffic is situated such that engine-start-up is pointed towards B'game. If it is determined that 777 start-up is a notable cause of noise, there might be other locations that would work. I was particularly interested in the noise we experienced on Mother's Day this year. It was quite bad in my yard, but the peak noise measurements at the two North B'game monitoring stations didn't really show what I know I heard. SFO has awarded a contract to replace the 15 year old noise monitors with new technology and one can only hope that 15 years of technical advancement brings as much improvement in microphones as it has in other products. I will be getting a short-term noise monitor installed in my yard in July with better noise correlation that is done by a person using the actual recordings as opposed to the system algorithm and NOAA radar data about take-offs. It should be interesting although I am under no illusion that it will fix anything other than my curiosity.
Mr. Ong puts a lot of hope on the Airport Roundtable's ground noise subcommittee being able to isolate the main cause(s) of the runway noise so that something innovative can be done to mitigate it. I hate to conclude with "we shall see", but that is where we're at.
Hi, joe. Nice writing and reporting. When you get the portable monitor, disregard the “a” decibel measurements as those readings diminish jet back blast. Ensure you get “c” measurements. And I’m asking myself, Why are Roundtable laypeople working to find the cause of the dramatic increase in runway noise over 3 years ago when it’s the City and County of San Francisco’s responsibility to investigate and mitigate excessive noise coming from the airport as per FAA regulations? The goal of sforunwaynoise.com is to do just that. The City doesn’t have to comply with any recommendations the Roundtable may make. Having said that, if I’m proven wrong, I’ll eat crow with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Posted by: Sally Meakin | June 25, 2019 at 10:16 AM
Here is an update from the SFO Runway Noise team:
SFO has now stated that they will be able to review the low-frequency rumbling noise that their sound monitors have recorded for many years. This is the sound that we care about as it is equivalent with ground-based noise. In the past, this data has not been reported, but it was indeed stored. The plan is to look at: 1) noise levels in the past, 2) just prior to the changes made on runways 1 R and L, and 3) noise heard now.
If we can determine exactly WHEN the noise became so much louder, we can perhaps pinpoint which changes at the airport caused it and therefore what can be done to improve things.
It is a lot of data to examine, and to get the most meaning out of this opportunity, it would be super helpful if any of you can help us pinpoint exactly when you first noted a change. We are hoping that maybe someone had an outdoor event or conference call when working from home or other specific memory that could help us determine which period we should begin examining.
The last meeting of the Ground-Based Noise (GBN) Subcommittee of the Airport Roundtable had to be rescheduled. However, we will be sending out information this week on both the general Round Table Meeting as well as the GBN Subcommittee Meeting that just took place.
Posted by: Joe | July 05, 2019 at 01:05 PM
Thanks, Joe!
Posted by: Peter Garrison | July 06, 2019 at 07:48 AM
Good morning, Joe. One night on November 20 - 24, 2015, the sudden and stark runway blast necessitated closing bedroom windows. I’d never heard this powerful sound from the airport before.
Posted by: Sally Meakin | July 19, 2019 at 08:37 AM
Hey Joe, I used to work with David Ong in the Air Force. Sure wish I knew how to ge in touch with him. Glad he was polite and helpful!
Posted by: Nathan Poole | March 06, 2021 at 04:36 PM
Nathan, shoot us an email at the [email protected] address and I will pass along Dave's contact info (just not sure about putting it here as you can imagine).
BTW, readers, Round 3 of our legal action on runway noise has been postponed AGAIN - first it was last November, then pushed to late January 2021, now it's in July of this year--maybe.
Posted by: Joe | March 06, 2021 at 05:01 PM