Shot on Film - Printed in the Darkroom

Who is the Beeping For?

Construction at the 46th Street - Bliss Street station, Sunnyside.

Jay Eckardt

9/22/20264 min read

At seven in the morning, an unmistakable sound begins outside my apartment.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I live about 350 feet from the construction at the 46th Street-Bliss Street 7 train station. The project

has been part of the neighborhood since 2024, and by now I am accustomed to construction. I

expect machinery, trucks, drilling and all the other sounds that come with building something

substantial in New York City.

But I have never become accustomed to the beep.

Some mornings several machines seem to get going at once, creating a postmodern cacophony

beneath the elevated tracks. The concrete structure doesn't help. Sound travels through it, reflects

off it and finds its way into the surrounding blocks. From roughly 7 a.m. until 3 p.m., there are days

when my home feels less like an apartment than a room in a hospital, with some unseen piece of

equipment perpetually calling for attention.

I am a sensitive person when it comes to sound. I know that. But I don't want to think this just

annoys me. There are hundreds of apartments, businesses and people going about their lives

within earshot of this project. And, of course, there are the construction workers themselves, who

experience these sounds at point-blank range.

Which has made me wonder: Who is the beeping for?

One machine in particular brought the question into focus for me: a Genie boom lift.

It is a rather ingenious machine. A worker stands in a basket at the end of a long articulated arm

and is carried to wherever he needs to work. Watching one makes perfect sense. What makes

less sense to me is hearing its warning alarm far beyond the construction site.

Much of this work takes place behind fencing, with access restricted to the public. Yet when the lift

maneuvers, the warning can become everybody's warning. A sound intended for people in the

immediate vicinity travels out into the neighborhood, where it no longer seems to convey much

useful information.

I'm 350 feet away. What am I supposed to do when I hear it?

I had always assumed that this particular sound was simply required by OSHA - that at some point

the government decided machinery had to go beep-beep-beep, and that was that.

It turns out to be more interesting than that.OSHA does require effective warnings in certain situations involving construction vehicles and

equipment, for very good reason. But its regulations don't mandate that familiar single-tone alarm.

OSHA has specifically addressed complaints about piercing alarms affecting people living near

construction sites and says its rules allow other effective technology; white-noise alarms can

qualify when they provide adequate warning.

In other words, there is another way.

I know because I've heard it.

Not long ago I was at Grand and Thompson in SoHo. There was serious road work going on,

including machinery moving steel in the street. Instead of the piercing beep, I heard a much softer

broadband warning - the shhh-shhh or white-noise sound that seems to come from the direction of

the machine rather than announcing itself to the world.

It still warned people. It just didn't punish everybody else.

That experience stayed with me. New York City itself recognizes construction noise as something

that should be mitigated, so the effect of these sounds on the surrounding environment isn't an

imaginary problem.

And that brings me back to Bliss Street.

I have watched this project grow for a long time now. Steel structures have risen alongside the old

concrete viaduct. Wooden forms appear and disappear. Machinery moves in and out. I don't know

enough about the engineering to judge what should take how long, and I don't particularly want to.

But as a neighbor, it is hard not to feel a little sad at the apparent pace of progress.

The beep has become a kind of soundtrack to that passage of time.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

There is something strange about that. Human beings have been building enormous things for

thousands of years. We have raised bridges, cathedrals, skyscrapers, railways and entire cities

without this particular sound following every movement. Yet somewhere along the way, the

electronic warning tone became so ordinary that we seem to have stopped hearing how

extraordinary it actually is.

Maybe that's what bothers me most.

I'm not suggesting that a single safety device be removed if somebody needs it. Quite the

opposite. A warning should be unmistakable to the person who needs to be warned.

But does it need to be unmistakable to me, inside my home 350 feet away?

There must be some reasonable radius between useful warning and unnecessary noise.We already have technology that approaches the problem differently. I've heard it elsewhere in

the city. So perhaps the question isn't how to make construction quiet. Construction isn't quiet.

The question is whether every bit of its noise is necessary.

And every morning, when that familiar sound reaches my window again, I find myself wondering the same thing:

Who is the beeping for?