LAKE VIEW TERRACE : Caltrans Test Backs Residents’ Noise Concerns

They had to shout to be heard--literally. But on Tuesday, Lake View Terrace residents finally got the ear of public officials.

Bothered by noise and vibration from traffic on the Foothill Freeway, homeowners on Foothill Boulevard near Orcas Street have badgered local officials to do something for three months. On Tuesday morning, the state Department of Transportation and aides for Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) and for Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs showed up with sound meters to hear for themselves.

What they found doesn’t surprise residents--two of four tests recorded noise slightly above the state’s tolerable level of 67 decibels.

“That’s the level above which we start looking at ways to mitigate it,” said William Minter, a Caltrans associate engineer who supervised the tests. “There’s enough noise out there to make us turn over some more rocks.”

Caltrans may return for more tests in the evening, when residents say traffic is worse, Minter said.

But Minter said it was unlikely that heavy vehicles were causing cracks in foundations and walls of nearby homes. The culprit more than likely is natural settling of the soil, he said.

That didn’t sit well with Bill Gohl, who showed Minter an inch-wide crack snaking up the rear wall of his Foothill Boulevard home, just 60 feet from the freeway’s northern shoulder. “The house was there since 1920, and I never had trouble with cracks,” said Gohl, who has lived in the house since 1941. “I didn’t have cracks until after the freeway,” which came through Lake View Terrace in 1981.

Caltrans officials took readings and chronicled passing vehicles at four locations along a quarter of a mile stretch of the Foothill Freeway near Orcas Street, including Gohl’s back yard. They will use computer analysis to sort out where the bulk of the noise originates--the freeway or the boulevard, said Minter.

Minter and Gohl agree that the six-foot-high sound walls along the Foothill Freeway are insufficient. But six feet was the standard when the Lake View Terrace segment of the freeway was designed in the late 1970s, said Minter. Caltrans now builds them two feet higher.

If Caltrans determines that it can do something to decrease sound at a reasonable cost, it can add a sound mitigation project to its priority list, where it must compete with other projects for scarce funds, Minter said.

Foothill Boulevard resident Ray Shelly, who volunteered his back yard for a test, seemed unimpressed by Tuesday’s early morning visit. Shelley, 57, was born in the clapboard house, built by his grandfather in 1898, before Foothill Boulevard and Foothill Freeway hemmed it in on two sides. Noise levels in his back yard were just below the state’s threshold, at 65 decibels.

“They’ll give it lip service and come out and do readings and then ignore it,” Shelly predicted.