Noise bylaw changes target excessively loud motorcycles and cars in Brampton
Published April 14, 2023 at 10:21 am
Brampton is going after loud vehicles and auto shops that perform illegal modifications as police are gearing up for a blitz against noisy drivers.
On Wednesday, City Council gave the go-ahead for City staff to make changes to Brampton’s noise bylaws that will see updates to how the City tracks complaints related to loud vehicles.
The City currently only tracks complaints under three types of noise – construction, excessive noise due to loud music, and barking dogs.
The changes were proposed by Coun. Rowena Santos, who said complaints of loud vehicles are tallied under the loud music category which has seen a 10-fold spike from 400 complaints in 2018 to over 4,000 last year.
“And a good chunk of that, we believe, is due to loud cars,” Santos said at council on Wednesday.
Council voted to greenlight City staff to propose changes that would see loud vehicles added into their own category. The City will also look to set a decibel limit for vehicles and bring bylaws in line with the Highway Traffic Act, which bans the use of mods like a straight exhaust or gutted muffler.
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The City is also looking at licensing auto shops to ensure modifications like prohibited mufflers aren’t being installed on vehicles in Brampton.
Santos said she proposed the changes ahead of a Peel Regional Police campaign starting in May called Project Noisemaker.
She said updating the bylaws will complement the police noise blitz which will run until October, and the City will be sending out updates to the community about the bylaw changes and any licensing requirements.
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