LAKE VIEW TERRACE : Neighborhood to Get New Sound Barrier

State transportation officials have determined that a Lake View Terrace neighborhood plagued by traffic noise from the Foothill Freeway deserves a new sound barrier.

The assessment comes three weeks after sound sensors on the north side of the freeway from Orcas to Christy avenues measured noise levels exceeding a state-defined tolerable threshold for residential neighborhoods.

Engineers from the state Department of Transportation said they also determined that a barrier could be constructed at a reasonable price, a further criterion to qualify the project for a regional priority list.

“It’s going to qualify, and we are going to take the necessary steps to put it on our priority list,” said Bill Minter, a Caltrans associate engineer who supervised the Dec. 7 tests.

Residents who have pestered officials about the noise for months cheered the decision.

“It would help this noise--I hope it would,” said Lolly Gohl, who has lived on Foothill Boulevard for 52 years, well before the freeway came through Lake View Terrace in 1981.

“We’re going crazy. It’s absolutely horrendous,” Gohl said. “It shortens people’s tempers. It changes people. It does unbelievable things to your system.”

Under the best of circumstances, it will be at least two years before residents would see a taller wall along the northern shoulder of the freeway, because Caltrans operates on biennial budgets, and has already submitted its wish list for fiscal year 1994.

When Caltrans built the Lake View Terrace segment of the Foothill Freeway, 6-foot-high sound walls were the industry standard, according to Minter. Today, Caltrans builds them 8 feet tall, he said.

Remedying the sound problems won’t be as simple as adding two feet of brick to the top of the sound wall behind Gohl’s home, Minter said. “Most likely, we would have to tear down the existing wall and construct a new one” on stronger footings, he said.

Despite the good news on the noise abatement, some residents, including the Gohl family, plan to continue pushing Caltrans for vibration tests to see if weighty traffic is causing structural cracks in their homes.

“Your house shakes like an earthquake,” complained Nancy Snider, who lives on Foothill Boulevard across from Gohl. “The whole house shakes from end to end.”

Minter said Caltrans so far has no plans to conduct vibration tests. He attributes the cracks to natural settling of the alluvial soil beneath the homes.