
Singing road strikes wrong chord with Dutch villagers - gscott
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-road/singing-road-strikes-wrong-chord-with-dutch-villagers-idUSKBN1HH39O
======
michaelt
Lancaster, California has a musical road - like the Dutch road, there were
complaints about the noise from residents; it was torn up and a new one built
out in the desert.

In both cases, it was mistuned [1] because of a miscommunication about whether
the dimensions for the spacing of rumble strip grooves included the width of
the groove itself.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0)

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poulsbohemian
When I was a kid, my dad was the mayor of our town. This story reminded me of
his time in office.

For example, they did a venture with a contractor using a new paving
technique, in an attempt to lower future costs for street paving. When it
didn't work, there was a clause protecting the city and the work was repaired
at no / little cost. Of course the local newspaper raked the city over the
coals for the burden of long construction times, completely ignoring that
local government had attempted to do something innovative and cost-saving for
its citizens.

In another case, the downtown area had become destitute, especially as the
main shopping area shifted to the outskirts of town. In an effort to
revitalize, the city put up new decorative lamp posts, flower baskets, and did
an attractive concrete stamping on new sidewalks. Once again, everybody
complained about government waste, when really the city was trying to do what
it could to make it a more attractive community and encourage more businesses
to reopen / stay downtown.

My point is, while perhaps the singing road didn't have its desired outcome, I
give them credit for trying to do something novel.

~~~
jstarfish
> Once again, everybody complained about government waste, when really the
> city was trying to do what it could to make it a more attractive community
> and encourage more businesses to reopen / stay downtown.

Having grown up in an area with no sense of style or flourish, I can
appreciate the sentiment behind that. Every time I go to Japan or most of the
west coast I'm blown away by how much effort goes into making the community
look...nice.

However, all too often, a city's attempt to do this involves a contractor or
supplier charging obscene amounts of money for the end result. Hence the
accusations of waste.

Case in point: Sandy Springs, GA recently paid $99,333 for the city's new
_logo_. The result is the caliber of work I'd expect from a Fiverr task.

~~~
mng2
That reminds me of an infamous episode from my hometown's history: the
surprise 'Welcome' sign installed by the county's Art Commission. It was
widely panned and ended up being taken down after two months. Looking back at
it now, the sign was indeed somewhat tacky, but the perception that the county
had done this without seeking local input is what really drove the vitriol.

[0]: [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Saying-Goodbye-to-
Castro...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Saying-Goodbye-to-Castro-
Valley-Welcome-Sign-2795148.php) [1]:
[https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2011/07/22/castro-valley-
canoe-...](https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2011/07/22/castro-valley-canoe-sign-
sunk/)

~~~
ryandrake
Wow, crazy story! “Let’s secretly decide to put up this eyesore, spend $100k
of taxpayer money on it, then when people don’t like it, try to re-educate
them and convince them to like it.” Classic case of government waste and
arrogance.

------
Freak_NL
The noise level was well within legal norms, but the provincial authorities
wisely choose to remove the 'singing road' after speaking with the local
residents affected by the noise.

Ostensibly, the musical effect was a secondary objective; the primary purpose
of this experiment was to test the durability of the specific type of rumble
strips used¹.

1: [http://www.lc.nl/friesland/Gedeputeerde-Zingende-weg-zou-
tot...](http://www.lc.nl/friesland/Gedeputeerde-Zingende-weg-zou-tot-na-zomer-
blijven-liggen-23078507.html)

------
carapace
Long ago I once saw an ad for a kind of swag: ribbons that attached to
balloons. There were ridges impressed onto the ribbon so that you could draw
your thumbnail down it and it would play a sound using the balloon as the
diaphragm. The ad was for a company that would put your recording onto the
ribbons, your jingle or slogan or whatever.

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truculation
Tom Scott drives along a _Californian_ singing road:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0)

------
dsfyu404ed
I wonder if something similar could be employed to produce a noise canceling
effect on jake brakes?

Obviously you wouldn't be able to get it spot on because of speed vs engine
RPM but you could at least tune it for the popular combinations.

~~~
jacquesm
Noise cancellation is all about phase and you have no way of knowing what the
revs are on the jake brake (which is essentially an engine running as a
compressor so it reduces speed rather than that it adds speed).

So while it may help in isolated cases it is going to _amplify_ the noise for
the remainder.

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PeterStuer
I can't believe the level of disfunctionality a local authority must attain to
even contemplate such an infrastructure. I realize not everyone in local
government can be a genius, but the collective IQ/EQ of this must be
substantially south of 100. Then again, I know a local mayor that had
cobblestones placed on a 30 meter stretch of road, officially to revive a
picturesque and photogenic atmosphere near the village church, unofficially
because it was right in front of the house of his political opponent which he
hoped would be driven insane by the noise.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I can imagine this. It's like my hometown, but in Europe.

This is exactly the kind of poorly thought out, money wasting boondoggle
projects you get when government is a gravy train not held accountable by it's
source of funding.

Right now my hometown is engaged in all manner of hand wringing over a pet
cemetery. They also put in more bike trail where a rail line was and spent
millions of dollars tearing down rail bridge and building a more visually
pleasing bike bridge. They must be expecting some fat cyclists since
apparently just converting the rail bridge wasn't appropriate. The police are
thoroughly overpaid and overstaffed and all run side businesses on taxpayer
time.

It sucks that you have to under-fund and under-staff local government and
services in order to get them to be well behaved (which to me means do their
jobs without screwing around and wasting too many resources on non-mission
critical crap) but I guess that's just how it is. If you just keep naively
feeding the monster (e.g. "oh, you've squandered all your money on new cop
cars and your building is falling down, well we'll give you the money this
time but please pinky promise you don't do this again") it will grow big
enough that you can't control it.

Edit: I know my last paragraph won't be popular here because it conflicts
greatly with the politics of the typical HN reader but I'd appreciate it if
you'd actually try and refute something I said.

------
atomical
There's something similar in New Mexico.

[http://thesingingroad.com/](http://thesingingroad.com/)

~~~
floren
Importantly, it's _outside_ of town and there are no houses very close.

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mannykannot
I am told that if you back up on it, you hear "Paul is dead".

~~~
gpvos
The (Dutch) text under the video linked in another comment states that some
people actually do drive the wrong way over it (when there is no other
traffic, I hope).

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colordrops
Would have been nice if the reporter let us listen to the road without them
talking over it.

~~~
skipperr
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDPcM_1vJs&t=43s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDPcM_1vJs&t=43s)

~~~
throwawayReply
It's interesting how you still observe the doppler effect even though the road
isn't moving.

~~~
superhuzza
I think this explanation makes sense?

The source of the noise at any given moment is where the tire is (or has just
caused) the strip to vibrate. That point is moving away from the observer
about as fast as the car is moving away from the observer

So, the doppler effect is present since the point of friction is moving to a
different point on the road, even if the road is stationary.

~~~
skoelden
I think your explanation is correct, apart from that i do not think it is the
tire that causes the strip to vibrate as much as it is the strip that causes
the tire to vibrate.

If it is the tire that makes the noise, it is no surprise that there is a
Doppler shift.

~~~
contravariant
I don't think the tire is vibrating at an audible frequency. The tire
colliding with the road creates a burst of air, and since these 'bursts' are
moving you have a doppler effect.

In theory you could create the same effect by setting off fireworks.

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rocky1138
A completely useless video which doesn't even play the full song for us to
listen to. Why are news companies so braindead?

------
adambowles
"byres"

