started a campaign in June 2025<\/a> to increase patrols in downtown and begin educating people about the problem of loud noise. The department put up signs to remind drivers about noise enforcement.<\/p>\nWhen and where citations are concentrated<\/p>\n
Downtown Fort Worth Inc. set up a series of decibel readers in 2024 throughout downtown to count how many times the sound level exceeded the thresholds covered by the city\u2019s noise ordinance. The study set up decibel readers at four residential locations in the core of downtown.<\/p>\n
According to decibel meters monitored by Downtown Fort Worth Inc., Friday nights from 9:30 to 10:30 p.m. were the noisiest time in downtown, with the highest number of incidents of excessive noise.<\/p>\n
The nonprofit\u2019s study found that Friday between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. had the most noise violations, when levels exceeded 80 decibels 94 times. The second loudest time of the week was Saturday morning between midnight and 1 a.m. with 91 incidents.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth police responded to 26 calls for \u201cLoud Music\/Party\u201d in downtown in the first six months of 2025, according to police data collected through an open records request. The majority of those calls did not have a police report, and five calls reported the offensive noise was gone on arrival or not able to be located, according to the data.<\/p>\n
The single address with the most calls was 100 Harding St., near the Huntley apartment complex on the northeastern edge of downtown. However, most of the calls were concentrated along Houston and Throckmorton Streets between West Weatherford Street and West Ninth Street.<\/p>\n
The challenge of enforcement timing<\/p>\n
Noise calls are often lower priority for the police, meaning it can take hours for an officer to show up, by which point the offensive noise has already dissipated. That\u2019s been a core frustration for residents.<\/p>\n
Downtown Fort Worth sits at the intersection of three freeways, a train yard and serves as both a central business district and entertainment spot. Roughly 11,600 residents call the neighborhood home, according to data from Downtown Fort Worth Inc.<\/p>\n
Residents acknowledged there\u2019s always going to be some noise in a dense urban area like downtown but argued the noise from cars and motorcycles is above the normal din.<\/p>\n
Car culture vs. nuisance noise<\/p>\n
De La Torre admits the area has always had noise. Usually it\u2019s a garbage truck, a police cruiser or an ambulance, but at least those noises serve a purpose, he said.<\/p>\n
Luis Galindo, a lawyer who\u2019s lived in The Tower for the past eight years, said the soundscape has changed in the past few years.<\/p>\n
While there has been a slight uptick in foot traffic recently, downtown is still a lot quieter than it was before the COVID-19 Pandemic, Galindo said in a July 2025 interview with the Star-Telegram.<\/p>\n
There were more restaurants, retailers and, while there was still music in Sundance Square, it never seemed to interfere with daily life, Galindo said.<\/p>\n
Now it seems like people come downtown on the weekend to cruise in their cars and play loud music, he said. He emphasized that he didn\u2019t have an issue with people coming downtown \u2014 only the excessive noise.<\/p>\n
Galindo said he has to turn up his music or television in order to hear it over noise from vehicles down below.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a safety issue, De La Torre said. Cars regularly speed down Houston Street past the convention center, he said, adding he worried about the safety of convention guests staying at the nearby hotels.<\/p>\n
Beard said the worry is that loud noises are making it hard for people to sleep \u2014 both at night and during the daytime.<\/p>\n
Beard pointed out that airline pilots, for instance, often stay in downtown hotels, and they could be sleeping at any time of the day depending on their flight schedules. If pilots don\u2019t get the required rest, Beard said, it can cause flight delays, disrupting interstate and international travel and commerce.<\/p>\n
Is the crackdown working?<\/p>\n
The increased focus on noise ordinance enforcement has improved things to a certain degree, Beard said. Still, residents cited noise as an ongoing issue at the March neighborhood alliance meeting.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Star-Telegram in September 2025, Galindo said there\u2019d been noticeable change since police increased enforcement in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t be everywhere at once, but there\u2019s definitely fewer people coming downtown just to make noise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He credited the advocacy of Downtown Fort Worth Inc. for working with the city to get the problem addressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good knowing someone\u2019s going to take us seriously and get our problems addressed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Beard hopes more awareness about the issue will help. That may be wishful thinking, though, if research is any indication.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Julie Aitken Schermer, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, published a paper that showed drivers who modified their exhaust systems to be louder were more likely to have psychopathic and sadist tendencies. The argument is these individuals enjoy making others miserable.<\/p>\n
The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Traffic flows down Houston Street at the corner of West Third Street in downtown Fort Worth on Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-264211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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