Burnaby residents coping with screeching SkyTrains, traffic noise prompts city to examine remedies

The City of Burnaby is looking for ways to reduce high levels of noise from vehicles and the SkyTrain for residents who live near a specific section of Lougheed Highway.

Residents have been complaining for years, with some moving to get away from the screeching sound of trains halting in the middle of the night, while others are too worried about the impact on home values to talk publicly about the problem.

This week, the city issued a request for proposals to build a “noise attenuation fence.” It previously contracted a firm to conduct studies with sensors at eight private residences on both sides of the highway around Lake City Way station and Charles Rummel Park, not far from the Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and Simon Fraser University.

The backyards of these houses face the highway. At some, the consultants set up microphones on patio decks to record and noise levels over 48 hours so they could compare them to the maximum allowed for indoor and outdoor locations. The microphones were positioned about 14 metres away from the SkyTrain route. All of the sensors recorded numbers that were in excess of allowable noise levels.