Neighbors Sound Off Over Noise of Freeway

Jonathan Zink doesn’t remember the date when the uninvited guests began joining his family for dinner.

He just remembers looking up from the table and seeing a never-ending line of cars speeding through his back yard, their drivers gazing in through his patio windows.

The cars were not literally in the back yard, but you couldn’t tell it from inside Zink’s house. As the cars sped south through Westminster on the San Diego Freeway, they were no more than 10 yards from the swing set where Zink’s 4-year-old daughter plays. There was, and still is, nothing between the cars and the swings but a low, temporary chain-link fence and there is nothing to halt the constant, loud roar of engines and tires.

Tall bushes along the edge of the freeway used to shield Zink’s house from at least the sight of the traffic. But in order to make way for a sound-deflecting, concrete-block wall to cut down the noise, Caltrans cut down the bushes, leaving some yards in full view of passing motorists.

‘They Take Time’

Once that happens, “people want the new walls built now, instantly,” said Wallace L. Carroll, resident Caltrans engineer for the project. “I build them as fast as I can. They take time.”

The wall project has been under way since last spring as part of the widening of the San Diego Freeway from Long Beach to Costa Mesa. Under federal highway standards, sound walls must be built along stretches where residences abut the freeway. For this project, that amounts to a little more than seven miles of wall costing about $580,000 a mile.

More sound walls will be built as the second phase of the widening continues from Costa Mesa to the junction with the Santa Ana Freeway in El Toro.

Just how much sound the walls eliminate depends on many factors, but Carroll said that it is significant.

He said the reason residents sense that their back yards are noisier now that the bushes are gone probably is due to the psychological effect of seeing the traffic. Caltrans studies have shown that bushes do not actually reduce noise, he said.

Since the freeway opened in the mid-1960s. noise has been a part of life on Zink’s street, Vallecito Drive. But with the bushes as a buffer, “you kind of get used to the noise,” said Esther Perez, one of Zink’s neighbors. “We can live with it, but you still hear it all the time.”

News of Caltrans’ plans to build sound-deflecting walls was applauded along Vallecito. But when excavation began last spring for the 7 1/2-foot piles necessary to support the 12 1/2-foot sound wall, fences belonging to Zink and some other neighbors were undermined and collapsed. They were replaced by the temporary chain-link fences.

Had to Adapt

In the meantime, families like the Zinks have had to adapt to the new intrusion of traffic.

Laura Zink keeps her back drapes closed all the time, “because you don’t want to see the cars.” The sliding glass door behind the drapes remained closed all summer, and both the screened-in patio and the terraced lawn in the back yard have gone unused.

“With the noise and the dirt and the smell, you don’t want to go back there for a barbecue,” she said.

Now and then, 4-year-old Amy goes back to play on her swings, but with the sight of cars whizzing by 30 feet away, “it’s not a real comfortable feeling for a parent,” Jonathan Zink said. He added that he is concerned about a car or truck making the easy trip into their back yard.

“It happens more often than you think,” he said.

Before the bushes were torn out, it happened twice to Pam Cowley, another Zink neighbor who has lived on Vallecito for 12 years. No one was hurt in either mishap.

“I don’t let my kids play out there,” she said. “We keep it mowed--that’s it. I keep the back of the house closed up.

“If it’s too hot and you have to open it, you turn up the TV or stereo real loud. When trucks go by, the house shakes. You can’t tell if it’s an earthquake or not.”

Dave Garrison, a free-lance writer and Vallecito resident, said the removal of the freeway bushes has had only one benefit. After the removal of a section of the chain-link fence along his back yard, he was able to drive his 1950 Studebaker onto the freeway right of way and advertise it for sale.

“It went fast. I couldn’t believe it--it sold overnight,” Garrison said.

Other than that, however, the yard has become unusable, he said. One neighbor’s dog “went crazy,” but Garrison’s pet rabbit, Roger, whose hutch is against the chain-link fence, has merely gone deaf, Garrison said.

Nowadays, Roger just sits there, his ears drooping onto the ground. Garrison doesn’t go into the back yard without the protection of music played through earphones.

Perez said she and her husband still sleep well.

“We both work all day. By bedtime, we’re tired, so we sleep,” she said.

Another neighbor, who identified herself only as Mrs. Villarreal, said the noise is not as bad as the fumes from auto exhaust.

“It’s making me choke,” she complained.

She said she hopes the new wall will be built before the rainy season, because wet pavement makes for even noisier tires.

Caltrans engineer Carroll said the wall for that stretch of freeway will be finished in about three months.

“This job hasn’t gone particularly slow,” he commented.

It can’t be finished too soon for Garrison.

“I stood on the other side (of the freeway, where a sound wall already has been built) to see what it’s going to be like. You can still hear (the freeway), but you get rid of the tire sing. You won’t lose the trucks, but maybe you’ll lose the cars.”

When it happens, the Zink family has a celebration already in the planning stages.

“Possibly, we’ll put up a for-sale sign,” Jonathan Zink said.