The Musical Road

In September, 2008, Honda Motor Company constructed a musical road on Avenue K, between 60th Street West and 70th Street West as part of their Honda Civic ad campaign. After several complaints from local residents, the street was then paved over to alleviate the nuisance that it created. However, after much public interest, the Lancaster City Council decided to reconstruct the road and relocate it to a more remote location on Avenue G, between 30th Street West and 40th Street West. Both projects used the same melodic line from Rossini’s William Tell Overture. However, possibly due to miscalculations during the engineering process, the melodic intervals are quite different than the actual tune, while the rhythmic patterns are accurate. This is the first musical road to be constructed in the United States, and is only one of a few located in the entire world.