opinion

As these words are written, night has fallen over Perejil and the noisy neighbor kids haven’t yet piped down and gone to sleep, but Young [insert your preferred epithet] On Wheels are already racing up Avenida Nacional, past the Santa Fe Hospital where it becomes the Transistmica, then past the Arnulfo Arias Hospital Complex. I’m a block away but I hear the roar loud and clear, with the emphasis on “loud.”

It will be a lucky night for me if no car alarm goes off on the block. But before the witching hour --- when the members of our local negligentsia doze off and won’t be able to rouse themselves to turn off their wailing car alarms until everyone else is also awake --- visitors to apartments without bells or buzzers will be shouting their greetings.

The other night I slept in a 21st floor apartment in Paitilla. I caught the fireworks from the mayors’s Christmas parade there, too --- which set the little dog of the house off into barking fits. After the show she calmed down, and the night breezes also got back to normal, carrying the sounds of Young ____ On Wheels and multiple car alarms.

In the morning I visited a friend in Cangrejo, and she complained that the noise on her side street is making life in her new apartment unbearable. It’s not just the noise from the twice-a-day traffic jams that grip the area, but all the sounds of life in the big city.

I love this city, but I can’t ignore its noise problem. Except for the deaf, urban noise seriously detracts from the quality of our lives. Correction --- even deaf people have to put up with the surly attitudes of those who are stressed out by all the noise.

Hizzoner the mayor has done some of the right things. However, mostly through no fault of his own, he hasn’t made a lot of progress.

For example, City Hall and the Transito Police have repeatedly cracked down on street racing, but the problem just moves around. Our laws are not strict enough, and that’s a function of the arrogant prevailing notion that the possession of expensive property confers the right to annoy lesser human beings with it.

People who race cars on our city streets should lose those vehicles. Not just those behind the steering wheels, but those who own the offending cars, should forfeit their toys. (You say you had no idea that your son was racing your Jaguar through a hospital zone? Tough.)

Isn’t it time that Panama banned the importation and sale of noisy car alarms, prohibited insurance companies from requiring these devices, and confiscated alarms used to disturb the peace? Wouldn’t it be a fitting exercise of national sovereignty if we encouraged the more effective and blessedly silent kill switches and lo-jack car security systems in lieu of the Viper alarms imposed on us by the reactionary Congressman Darrell Issa and the other brands offered by his competitors in the multinational noise industry?

Then there are the physical factors.

The interiors and exteriors of buildings can be designed to echo or amplify noise, or designed to muffle it.

But to think in such terms --- or about things like buzzers for apartments, non-slippery sidewalk materials, barrier-free building design and so on --- implies the creation and enforcement of reasonable building codes, which is a radical concept in this country.

Trees tend to absorb and deaden much of a neighborhood’s racket. A municipal forestry program --- which our city has, albeit an underfunded one --- is thus an anti-noise program.

However, our city loses a lot of trees from both private property and public right-of-ways when they are cut to make parking spaces. Limiting this damage implies some fundamental rethinking of our traffic and parking systems, and building codes that require adequate parking spaces and restrict the conversion of buildings to uses that require extra parking that can’t be provided without cutting trees.

(Do I hear weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth from a certain developer who got nailed with a big fine by the city for cutting down a lot of trees without a permit? I am moved --- to applaud the municipal government’s action.)

I won’t lose sleep anxiously awaiting any of the legal, cultural and physical changes I suggest. No, it will be things that roar and screech in the night that keep me awake.



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