On Leland Way, Roar of Freeway Is Music to Their Ears

Dave Flores, who lives on Leland Way in Burbank, doesn’t sit in his backyard gossiping with his neighbors.

They wouldn’t be able to hear each other.

The roar from the Golden State Freeway, just 50 yards away, is recorded at an average of 78 decibels--about the same level as a noisy vacuum cleaner, and higher than the maximum noise level recommended by acoustical engineers.

The houses on Leland Way are so close to the eight lanes of Interstate 5 that if freeway drivers cruising by look eastward, they can see the inside of some of the living rooms.

“Some of my friends think I’m crazy to live next to the freeway,” Flores, 36, a Burbank city employee, shouted to a visitor recently. “But there’s always something to see--mobile homes, sport cars, accidents--maybe one major wreck a year.”

There are plenty of homes adjacent to the freeways of Los Angeles. The difference between Leland Way and most of the other streets near freeways is that it is on the same level as the Golden State. Most freeways, said Satish Chander, head of Caltrans’ environmental investigations department, are either elevated or depressed from residential areas. In addition, there are no plants, trees or shrubs on Leland Way to act as a buffer. There is only a chain-link fence and narrow spillway.

Plans for Wall

But the view that Flores enjoys may soon change. The California Department of Transportation plans to spend $3 million to build a 12-foot-high wall in an attempt to cut down on the drone from up to 12,300 vehicles an hour.

“The idea behind the ‘sound wall’ is to reduce the noise level by at least five decibels,” Chander said. Construction is scheduled to begin in January, 1986.

Flores, for one, isn’t convinced that the project is necessary.

“I would hate to see them put up a wall. It’s sort of comforting to see all these cars go by,” he said. Flores, a motor-home aficionado, said he especially likes to see Winnebagos go by.

Occasionally, Flores said, stranded motorists yell to him from the freeway, asking him to call a tow truck.

Despite that rare inconvenience, though, he said life is much better on Leland Way than it was when his family lived in an apartment on Vanowen Street in Burbank. “People were fighting all the time. You’d hear people screaming and arguing. It was like being in prison. This is heaven,” he said.

For Bob Fulgham, who has lived on Leland Way for nine years, the steady thunder of the freeway has even become calming. “It’s sort of like the ocean,” he said.

Like Flores, Fulgham, a paint salesman, says he prefers the neighborhood to his old one, where he and his family lived in front of a traffic light on Victory Boulevard in Burbank.

“The exhaust and noise were terrible there,” he said. “We could hear trucks downshifting, cars screeching to a halt, gears grinding all night long. It was a nightmare.”

Fulgham said that, near the freeway, about the only nuisance is an occasional booming voice in the middle of the night saying through a bullhorn, “Pull over to the right. This is the Highway Patrol.”

The person who probably knows the most about Leland Way is Winnie Mahr, who at 87 has lived in the same house in the 11000 block since 1942, the year her home was built. Three years later, the freeway--then called U.S. 99--was built.

Mahr said that when she first heard of the highway project, she protested to the mayor of Burbank.

Then-Mayor Walter R. Hinton told her to move, she recalled. “He told me to sell the house and get away from the freeway. He said I’d be better off,” she said.

Because Mahr and her husband worked at Lockheed, within walking distance of their home, they decided against the move.

Regrets Decision

Mahr says she has grown to regret the decision.

“I think now I should have sold,” she said in the living room of her two-bedroom house, with the sound from a TV game show turned up almost enough to drown out the freeway noise. “For just a little more, I could be living in the hills now, away from this all.”

The four-lane highway was widened to eight lanes when Interstate 5 opened on July 11, 1961. Since then, the noise level has climbed yearly, according to Caltrans.

That is one of the reasons the homes on Leland Way fetch about 20% less than comparable residences a mile away, according to Herb Vincent, owner of Vincent Realty in Burbank.

The only residence on Leland Way currently up for sale, a duplex, has been on the market for a year, and the asking price has dropped from $120,000 to $108,000. “It’s difficult to sell a house there, that’s for sure,” Vincent said.

12,300 Vehicles an Hour

Chander said 12,300 vehicles an hour pass Leland Way during the morning commute. During midday, there are 2,700 vehicles each hour, and during the afternoon commute the number peaks at 11,700.

The maximum recommended noise level is 75 decibels, according to Burbank city planners. Noise above that level, acoustical engineers say, can cause a variety of maladies--including increased blood pressure, irritability and a gradual deadening of hearing capacity.

But none of those conditions appears to be a problem for Leland Way residents.

“Apparently, the freeway doesn’t bother them,” said George Bullock, a Burbank city traffic engineer who handles complaints from residents about street noise. “We’ve never gotten a complaint about the situation there.”

“You live here, and you get used to the noise and dirt,” Fulgham said.

Fulgham said that when he neglects to put his car in the garage, it’s filthy with soot the next morning. And when the train passes on the west side of the freeway, his house shakes, he said. But that doesn’t bother him, either.

Soundproof House

Robert Diaz Jr., a 24-year-old sportswear distributor, has come up with one way to cope with the noise. Diaz said his house is as quiet as a mountain retreat.

“Soundproofing was the key,” he said. “Once you get in the house, and shut the windows and doors tightly, and pull the curtains closed, you can’t tell where you are--in the mountains or in front of a freeway.”

Almost everyone on the block has a story to illustrate the peculiar nature of their location.

Last year, Dave Flores and his wife, Sharon, were returning home one night when they discovered a would-be burglar trying to break into their house. The Floreses entered the home through their back door and, because of the freeway din, the intruder “didn’t even hear us,” Sharon Flores said.

Upon seeing the Floreses, the man fled, she said.

Francis Bettis, a 39-year-old Leland Way housewife, said the location has made a difference in what she does on her vacations. “I sleep from the time I get away till when I get home,” she said. “And when I sleep at night on vacation, my husband says I snore, something I never do here.”

But, much like her neighbors, Bettis said there are features to life on Leland Way that she has learned to appreciate. One weekends, her son, Tony, takes his drums out to the front yard to practice.

“This way, he can bang as much as he wants and we can’t hear the drums at all,” she said. “He’s happy and we’re happy.”