If loud vehicles are affecting your quality of life, you’re not alone.
Mayor Jonathan Cote and the New Westminster police board recently received a letter from a downtown resident voicing concerns about the “loud vehicle exhausts epidemic” in New Westminster. The resident, whose name was not included in the email to the police board, said excessive vehicle exhaust noise is in violation of the Motor Vehicle Act, of community mindfulness and of common sense.
“There are many vehicles travelling through downtown New Westminster which have had mufflers or engines modified or in disrepair so that they are very much louder than any other vehicles in its class – cars, trucks and motorcycles. This is quite obviously noise disturbance, affecting thousands of people all day, startles everyone around, often sets off parked car alarms, raises everyone’s blood pressure, increases anxiety and depression. And is illegal!” said the email. “These extraordinarily loud vehicles can also be heard on other streets from hundreds of metres away from my residence on Carnarvon and Fourth Street.”
New Westminster police Chief Const. Dave Jansen said loud vehicle exhaust is an “ongoing complaint” made to the police department.
“It certainly seems to get worse in the summer months, I think, when people’s windows are open and they are trying to get some fresh air, and then they have the loud vehicles,” he told the police board at its July meeting. “It was brought forward by one resident who has been, in the past, working with our sergeant in traffic, but it’s certainly not just one person that we hear from. We hear it on multiple fronts and from multiple individuals.”
According to Jansen, Sgt. Greg Smith, who is in charge of the NWPD’s traffic unit, has been engaged with the community and the province on this issue. Jansen said the province surveyed police organizations last year, with the idea of providing some assistance to municipalities on dealing with this issue.
“What that exactly will be, I don’t know because the province hasn’t finished their work on that,” he said. “But I know that our sergeant has been looking towards the province to maybe provide some additional tools or resources to assist with that. What he has also done is he has provided information to all our frontline officers.”
Jansen said the NWPD’s traffic section is only now getting back to being fully staffed after being “completely under-resourced” due to COVID-19 in the unit. He said frontline officers have been provided with a lot of information about the laws related to vehicle noise.
“They are aware of it and enforce it when they can. It really does also come down to priorities,” he said. “If we have got a lot of complaints about different dangerous traffic activities in different areas of the city, we also have to juggle that. It isn’t like we can dedicate a full-time resource just to deal with loud vehicle exhaust, but it’s certainly something that we are aware of.”
Working with province
Jansen said the police department will continue to keep an eye on the issue and to work with the province.
Cote, who chairs the police board, questioned how police enforce loud vehicles.
Jansen said enforcement takes place when members are out and about and come across “a vehicle or a motorcycle screaming up the road.” In other instances, he said the traffic unit will set up in areas where complaints have been made about the presence of a lot of loud vehicles.
“There is not a need for a testing device. There is case law that’s gone to the B.C. Supreme Court that upheld that a subjective assessment is all that is required under certain sections of the Motor Vehicle Act regulations. That does provide some assistance to the members who may not have that expertise with a device to be able to use their own skills and abilities to issue a ticket if required,” Jansen said. “There are different approaches that we take to it, based upon the complaints and based upon what the members may come across in their day-to-day activities.”
Cote said he appreciated the verbal update from the police chief, but said he’d like the board to get a further update on the latest conversations between the NWPD and the province on this issue and about the number of tickets issued.
“We can’t be the only city that receives these kinds of complaints and concerns,” he said. “I think we would all struggle with prioritizing where police resources go, but as a city that does have some noise issues from a variety of different sources, obviously we do know it has an impact on community livability. I know this is an issue that has been raised by a number of residents over the years.”
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