“Am I supposed to do the dance to this music?” Peter Krantz smirks as he listens to the sound of a jackhammer from his living room on Tuesday morning.
“I was woken up at 6 a.m. exactly this morning with this sound.”
The noise was coming from work to demolish a temporary structure over Greene Avenue, not far from his apartment on St. Antoine Street, between Green and Atwater.
Sound meters have been installed to measure noise coming from the construction site, and those levels can be monitored on a government website. Noise from the site on Tuesday morning was registering in reds — above 70db.
His neighbour Robert Kabwe agrees and says, he’s just fed up.
“Noise pollution is harmful to people’s health. It’s stressful and causes anxiety,” he says.
Hoping to put pressure on Transport Quebec, he put up flyers in the area with a hotline where people can call to complain.
It’s not the first time residents have sounded off on the noise coming from the Turcot construction. Transport Quebec has taken steps to address the issue, like using silencers on machinery when possible.
But as for the noise from the jackhammer that began Monday, some residents say they just want the work to start a little bit later.
I would say that starting at 9 a.m. would definitely ameliorate things,” says Kabwe. “It would be better. But maybe there are even more in-depth solutions that we can talk about.”
It looks like the flyers worked. In a phone call, Transport Quebec told Global News that as a result of the complaints, work will now begin only after 8 a.m.
That work is expected to continue for the next few weeks.