The anti-loud pipes lobby has been relatively quiet this year (haha!), but now, we’re hearing complaints out of Edmonton. This summer, a city councillor is spearheading an effort to increase fines on vehicles that break legal noise limits—of course, motorcycles are a primary target.
You can see the petition at Councillor Michael Janz’s website here. Note that it specifically zooms in on motorcycles as a source of noise pollution, and calls for greatly increased penalties, and even outright bans on motorcycles in certain areas. See below:
We don’t need driver education; we need enforcement. We don’t need warnings; we need tickets and impounding.
The maximum allowable fine could be increased up to $10,000. The current 85-decibel limit may be too high and require a reduction to 74 decibels like in Europe. Community members also suggested noise curfews forbidding noisy motorcycles after certain hours or outright motorcycle bans along certain roads (Whyte Avenue, Saskatchewan Drive, Groat Road, Connors Road, for instance).
So, not only are people in the community saying noise is a problem, they want to take motorcycles off some roads, and further limit their noise output.
CBC has a further look at the story here. In that write-up, Janz suggests fines as high as $5,000 for too-noisy vehicles, and once again singles out motorcycles in his crusade.
The CBC report says Edmonton’s city council is going to debate a report on the city’s problems with noisy vehicles at its meeting on August 8.
This is not the first time we’ve had these discussions from Edmonton—see here for a writeup from all the way back in 2014.
