'All revved up': No More Noise Toronto gears up for overdue bylaw review

Arthur Klimowicz says the traffic outside his home in Toronto's Old Town can make for a rough night's sleep.

"People stop with the red light, they get all revved up, and then they take off," said Klimowicz, who lives near Adelaide and Sherbourne Streets. 

Throughout the night, he said, "We get peaks of over 100 decibels." 

That's the average volume of a power lawn mower or chainsaw. It's also well above the World Health Organization's recommendation that people not expose themselves to more than 45 decibels of road traffic noise over night.

Nearly five years after Toronto amended its noise bylaw to limit amplified sound and motorcycle noises and empower officers to enforce it, the city is finally reviewing the bylaw — nearly four years behind schedule. 

That's welcome news for folks like Klimowicz and other residents who joined Ingrid Buday's No More Noise Toronto, a grassroots campaign seeking to pressure city hall to crack down meaningfully on high-volume noise — which research has shown can hurt our health. 

"I get woken up by a moving vehicle," Buday said. "I can call the city and they'll say, 'thank you very much, but we can't do anything because it's a moving vehicle.'"  

She says she's felt compelled to speak out ever since one such incident in 2020.

"They told me to contact the police. The police want a license plate, they want a picture, they want a description," Buday said. 

"I'm in bed."

The city began the public consultation phase of its bylaw review in September, hosting six meetings that month and accepting feedback via email through mid-October. In total, the city says 750 people attended the meetings and over 2,200 emails were submitted.

Buday, who began documenting sound levels in 2020, formed No More Noise Toronto two years ago in preparation for the bylaw review. Through the group, she's rallied people to action, building a website with information about noise pollution and what the city's doing about it. 

She's also created a digital map where people can report noise spikes that are then charted next to other reports. Since No More Noise Toronto formed, over 8,000 reports were filed — many from the downtown core but others near the Gardiner Expressway, the Don Valley Parkway, and other busy routes.

Clare Kumar, a campaign volunteer with No More Noise Toronto, says she's particularly sensitive to sound. She says summers where she lives in Etobicoke are "motorcycles, exhausts. It's jet skis, it's construction noise."