By: Jordan Baker

New Yorkers exhausted by constant sirens, jackhammers, blaring music, and other sonic assaults now have a new weapon in the fight for peace and quiet. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection has rolled out a free “NYC Noise” app that lets residents measure and report disruptive sound levels directly from their phones — a major step in tackling the top complaint logged in the 311 system, the New York Post reported.

Available starting Monday morning, the app enables users to take a five-second decibel reading while documenting the time, date, location, and source of any irritating noise. As the NY Post reported, residents can categorize the disturbance as construction, alarms, dog noise, loud music, traffic, HVAC drones, horn blasts, or emergency sirens, giving DEP richer data than traditional 311 complaints typically provide.

The city hopes that as more people make use of the tool, officials will be able to compile a sweeping citywide noise map. According to the Post, that map will reveal hotspots, track patterns by time of day and season, and show which types of noise plague specific neighborhoods. App results will display in both map and table formats, offering average and maximum decibel levels alongside user notes — making the invisible problem of noise blight much easier to quantify.

“Noise is one of the most common quality-of-life issues New Yorkers face, and this new tool will help us better understand when and where those disturbances occur,” DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said, the NY Post reported.

DEP plans to combine the crowdsourced readings with existing data from its network of “noise cameras,” which quietly monitor for illegally loud motorcycles, honking vehicles, and booming car stereos. Those cameras have already produced more than $1.7 million in fines in recent years, the Post previously reported, demonstrating how aggressively the city is cracking down on chronic offenders.

Last year alone, New Yorkers made more than 700,000 noise complaints through 311 — far more than any other category of nuisance, the NY Post reported. And “after-hours” construction remains one of the biggest irritants, generating more than 20,000 complaints in 2023 as residents endured early-morning or late-night jackhammering. Traditional 311 complaints, however, often lack precise decibel readings and timestamps, weakening enforcement efforts.

While users can now take their own sound measurements, DEP says the community-submitted data will not lead directly to enforcement actions, and the app does not record audio, only decibel levels. Instead, the goal is to use this more accurate, time-specific information to deploy inspectors more effectively — focusing on the right blocks at the right hours.

The noise readings will help fill longstanding gaps: how loud disturbances actually are, when they’re happening, and what’s causing them. For instance, if multiple app users document jackhammering between 8 and 10 a.m. at a given location, inspectors can be scheduled during that window to catch violations in progress.

Construction remains one of the city’s most deafening offenders. Jackhammers and power saws blast at roughly 110 decibels — nearly as loud as a jet engine at takeoff.