The eerie hum of the Golden Gate Bridge, which has elicited comparisons to “chanting monks” and a “wheezing kazoo”, will soon be muffled.
Local officials have offered a fix to the “unbearable” noise that’s been echoing in San Francisco neighborhoods – much to the irritation of some residents – on particularly gusty days since last year. The Golden Gate bridge, highway and transportation district proposed an estimated $450,000 project to install aluminum clips that will help reduce the sound created when wind hits the slats in the bridge’s hand railing.
The bridge district unanimously approved the project at its meeting on Friday morning.
“After studying this phenomenon extensively, we’ve determined that the sound comes from new and more aerodynamic railing that we installed on the west sidewalk,” Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, a bridge spokesperson, told the Guardian in June. “It was part of a Golden Gate Bridge retrofit designed to protect the bridge for future generations by allowing it to withstand sustained high winds up to 100mph.”
On days when the wind blew just right – either slightly north or slightly south – the bridge emitted a strange song, which some residents described as soothing and others said “sounded like a noise I could imagine jailers using to torture prisoners”. On windy days, residents reported, the sounds could be heard from miles away.
“We can hear this in our house more than three miles away from the bridge. It’s crazy-making,” one resident said.
Bridge officials found the sound often matches the musical note A.
The plan, developed by bridge engineers and bridge aerodynamics and acoustics experts, will require placing aluminum clips containing a rubber sleeve on each of the 12,000 vertical slats on the west railing, which would reduce the sounds by 75%. The Golden Gate district estimates the cost to make the clips is $450,000. The project is expected to be completed by late 2022.
