In 1992, I attended a public hearing of the environmental noise committee of Greenwich Village's Community Board 2. I had heard rumblings about draconian proposals possibly affecting motorcycle owners. Since my neighborhood resides within CB2 I thought it might be a good idea to attend and see what was up. While many people stepped up to the mic to gripe about a loud restaurant on their block or a noisy ventilation fan behind their building, most had something to say about "those damned motorcyclists". They weren't just annoyed by the noise of loud bikes strafing their neighborhoods all night long. Some were livid. I thought the angrier citizens might adjourn outside at any moment with torches and pitchforks to burn a few parked motorcycles, one of which was mine.
While no one can deny that there aren't some obnoxious bikers tearing up the neighborhood, especially on weekends, what was curiously absent at the hearing was any expressed outrage towards the relentless car-horn honking which has only gotten worse as downtown Manhattan's increasing popularity races it towards terminal traffic gridlock. As a 25-year resident of the area, I've always rated car horns as the #1 through #9 worst environmental noise offenders, with loud bikes a distant twelfth after boombox cars and automobile theft alarms. Maybe everyone has just grown to accept this racket as background noise. Or perhaps they realize it's a problem too huge and too historic to do anything about. But, motorcycles on the other hand...
The CB2 meeting resulted in several NYPD and DOT crackdowns in the Village area against loud bikes. One of these stings was conducted outside my Broadway windows one Friday night. NYPD funneled traffic to a single lane and detained any bikes which had popped the DOT decibel meter a couple of blocks north. The offending motorcycles were artlessly loaded into waiting NYPD flat-bed trucks, hauled away to the pier for the weekend and their riders were handed citations and directed towards the nearest public transportation. Ironically, the cops were deaf to the cacophony of car horns illegally protesting the blocks-long traffic jam they had created in the course of "traffic calming", their drivers blatantly ignoring posted signs demanding "No Horn Honking". Also, curiously, almost all of the motorcycles seized were sportbikes, not Harleys.
Over the next couple of years, DOT's stings waned, but not the continuing efforts of local neighborhood associations to get rid of loud bikes. To prove that point, last month, the NYC City Council passed a new fine structure for noise violators. A third-offense for loud pipes will cost the motorcycle's owner what amounts to the cost of a fine motorcycle: $4200!
On Nov 2, the New York Times dropped the other shoe and ran a story about a proposal which CB2 intends to bring before the Council shortly: an outright ban on motorcycle traffic in Greenwich Village: from 14th Street to Canal St. and, Bowery to, but not including, West Street. This area circumscribes two favorite haunts for NYC motorcyclists: the popular Hogs and Heifers and Ear Inn on Spring St., which is the site of the weekly NYC Motorcyclists "Tuesday Night Hang". It also includes American Dream Machine on Watt Street, but stops just short of including Hells Angels headquarters on E.3rd Street, which would have been interesting.
Sean Maher, legal affairs specialist for the American Motorcyclist Association, responded with a denouncement of the proposal. The AMA has been instrumental in successfully fighting motorcycle bans in other cities, from Chicago to Nantucket, and doesn't think it will fly in NYC either. However CB2 is convinced that the city has all the precedent it needs to make the ban stick. It points to the city's authority to ban truck traffic from selected residential streets and believes it can be expanded to include motorcycles as well.
In its rush to judgment, CB2 seems to be forgetting a few details, the foremost of which is that motorcyclists are taxpayers. Public streets are public streets. I pay local taxes to maintain them. To be prohibited access to the roads of my own neighborhood while out-of-state car drivers... the same people responsible for much of the weekend noise in the city... are free to use them is grossly unfair. Secondly, most motorcyclists don't have drag pipes on our bikes. The vast majority of us don't tear up residential streets at 2am and don't find retarded thrill at setting off car alarms. But CB2's proposal tacitly views us all as unrepentant offenders who do. Finally, motorcyclists aren't "commerce" which can be constitutionally regulated. We don't create the traffic jams responsible for most commercial traffic restrictions in NYC nor is commercial traffic banned access to entire neighborhoods of the city. CB2's proposal goes way beyond the commercial traffic restrictions they hope will validate their intentions.
How did motorcyclists find themselves demonized and singled-out for repression with bone-headed proposals like this? Certainly, there are a lot of irresponsible motorcyclists creating unnecessary noise. They should be removed from the road, if only because their behavior is responsible for a climate of increasing intolerance towards all motorcyclists.
But why stop here? What about all the car drivers in Greenwich Village? You could increase the number of loud bikes in NYC by a couple of orders of magnitude and it still wouldn't compare to the noise created by thoughtless cagers. When I began writing this article I began a tally of the car horns I heard blasting outside on Broadway. After fifteen minutes I stopped counting at 118. Otherwise I never would have finished writing this article. Loud motorcycles? Only one marginally noisy bike, probably a 500 dual-sport.
Surely this is proof that cars should be banned from Greenwich Village too. Or would this inconvenience too much the proponents of the motorcycle ban who would find themselves having to commute to Chelsea garages to pick up their own cars, just as CB2-area motorcyclists would have to do if their efforts became law? And, horrors!!.. what would happen if Chelsea's CB decided to take advantage of the precedent and adopt the same car ban?
The prospect of a car ban would tickle the Transportation Alternatives folks who have for years dreamed of exactly this, but... wait a minute... what about all those kamikaze bike messengers running red lights, riding against traffic? What about all those bicyclists illegally riding on the sidewalk, violating traffic laws and even hitting and occasionally killing innocent pedestrians? Isn't this evidence that bicyclists are a bunch of habitual lawbreakers and an environmental threat to decent citizens as well? Well, they'll have to go too, and they can take those damned rollerbladers with them. Same deal for all the negligent dog owners who let their pooches bark all night long and poop wherever they like... 'bye, dogs. And those joggers who run in traffic and bump into startled pedestrians, and while we're at it what about all those oblivious mothers who use their baby strollers like sidewalk battering rams? Or have we gotten a little too close to repressing the rights of those who seem only too willing to unreasonably repress ours?
The fact is, if NYC wanted to crack down on loud pipes, which annoy most motorcyclists as much any other citizen, it could easily do so now, just as it could crack down on all illegal traffic noise. But doing so requires motivating NYPD to re-prioritize its crime-fighting efforts, which grab headlines, to quality-of-life enforcement, which only wins headlines when some politically-motivated talking head honks about it. We know it's much easier to pass newer, tougher laws than it is to enforce the old ones, which work just fine if they're enforced.
As motorcyclists, we can all agree that CB2's proposal is outrageously unfair. We enjoy our freedom; that's why we ride. But to paraphrase our forefathers, with freedom comes the responsibility to protect it because freedom is perishable. The AMA's legal defense fund isn't bottomless and there is only one vocal supporter of motorcyclists' rights in Washington, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. That means it's mostly up to us to protect ourselves. Paramount among that is avoiding needlessly giving the public a reason to step on that freedom. Our "right to ride" is balanced by their "right to domestic tranquillity". Whether or not you agree with that is academic because that's the way they see it and they're bigger than we are. In the end, it's simple high-school physics: when two objects collide the little guy loses.
The Loud Pipes Saves Lives crowd believes that window-rattling motorcycle noise is a safety matter, something to increase the visibility of motorcycles in potentially lethal traffic. After watching these riders for many years, what would benefit most of them far more than loud pipes is a defensive riding school. The theory that a little extra noise will save your neck is debunked by the tens of thousands of drivers who hit 18-wheelers, emergency vehicles and even trains every year.
Regardless of your religious persuasion, what the LPSLers have got to begin to realize is that loud pipes is killing motorcycling a little piece at a time. CB2's proposal is just more evidence of this. The public is fed up with the noise - the same public which holds the power to make life not only rough on them but for all motorcyclists. Joe Citizen may not win this round in NYC but there are still lots of other proven legal options available to him, including requiring motorcycles to submit to annual noise emissions tests at DOT testing facilities, passage of local noise standards below that of federal EPA, closure of more private communities and parks to motorcycles and stepped-up law enforcement harassment of motorcyclists. All are being increasingly adopted across the country, including locally in Westchester and in several Long Island townships. Remember too that this same public elects representatives to Albany and Washington to regulate things which also have a profound effect on the long-term future of motorcycling: insurance rates, health insurance coverage, motorcycle safety equipment and the ever-threatening motorcycle horsepower limits. Do you want them as a tolerant ally or an angry enemy?
If you're one of those who bought drag pipes because your buddies cracked on you about your girlie-man bike or because you think your motor sounds sweeter with straight pipes, think again. If you can't appreciate the long-term effect of those pipes on the legislative future of motorcycling then start thinking about their cost to you in dollars and cents. $4200 will buy you a show-quality Norton Commando, my friend. Still, a lot of us, including me, dislike stock pipes because of their inherent performance hit. There are plenty of high-performance pipes on the market which will street-perform far better than any unbaffled pipe and which won't send the family cat running for cover and frustrated citizens running to their community boards.
The ultimate shame is that most of those making the noise are short-hop, weekend warriors who will move on to some other ego-gratifying fashion statement when motorcycling gets too hot for them, and they won't think twice about the rest of us left behind to deal with the mess they have caused.
See you on the barricades.
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