My Quixotic Quest for Quiet in New York City

The corner of Canal and Hudson Street at rush hour may be the loudest place in New York City. That’s when the daily share of its 1.26 million monthly vehicles—1.2 million cars, nearly 13,000 buses, and close to 85,000 trucks, as of March—slug through the Holland Tunnel, spilling out onto tight Manhattan corridors built for traffic half the size. Mix that honking, yelling, clattering, and rumbling with the din of constant construction (there are nine active permits within a three-block vicinity, per the city’s active construction map) and infrastructure upgrades, and voilà, you have one noisy mess.

At this intersection you can often experience the perfectly normal New York thing of not being able to hear the person walking next to you. When I approached on a recent morning, I saw a few businessmen start a conversation, and then pause with visual gestures, choosing to be off of Canal before resuming.