Why California's Musical Road Sounds Terrible

In Lancaster, California, there's a musical road. When you drive over it, it plays the William Tell Overture. Unfortunately, it's out of tune. Here's why.
MilkmanDansays...

This is why engineers need to interface with somebody that straddles both worlds instead of talking directly to builders, customers, etc. Gotta have somebody that can properly translate nerd-speak into blue-collar / civilian.

newtboysays...

I knew about the failure, but I had no idea they repeated it. What morons. Good info.
If I lived anywhere within ear shot, I would be doing laps of the musical portion with tire chains on all 4 tires until it was gone, it's unbelievably annoying.

Mordhaussays...

That is the crazy part, isn't it? Why bother rebuilding it if you aren't going to fix it?

newtboysaid:

I knew about the failure, but I had no idea they repeated it. What morons. Good info.
If I lived anywhere within ear shot, I would be doing laps of the musical portion with tire chains on all 4 tires until it was gone, it's unbelievably annoying.

ChaosEnginesays...

I would have said this is why we build things off diagrams (plans, schematics, etc) rather than words.

I'm in the process of designing/building* a house and I very nearly made pretty much the exact same mistake (essentially assuming a 0 thickness of the walls).

* well, I am paying for other people to build it, but I am sending my very bad drawings to an architect who helpfully points out things like "the house will collapse if you remove that wall".

MilkmanDansaid:

This is why engineers need to interface with somebody that straddles both worlds instead of talking directly to builders, customers, etc. Gotta have somebody that can properly translate nerd-speak into blue-collar / civilian.

gobears0105says...

I've been on the musical road many times since my wife is from Lancaster. It sounds terrible, just like the video. I always wondered what could have gone wrong and if there was something preventing the engineers from building it with the right pitches. I knew they had rebuilt it because of complaints but that's crazy that nobody thought to correct it. Thanks for the video!

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