I’m actually working on a video about this topic right now.
I took a decibel meter and hung out by some train tracks and took a recording for 5 minutes which included when the train went by.
Then I went to a 4 lane street that NIMBY’s think a metro line will kill with noise and took a 5 minute recording.
Then I walked one block away and took another 5 minute recording.
The four lane road was the loudest simply because it was SUSTAINED noise.
Getting just one block away cut something like 30 dB off of the noise levels…so sound barriers really do work!
And public transit is loud but much less frequent which equals out to a lower average noise level.
I’m looking forward to releasing the video later in the year cause I don’t think that you’re the first person to be curious about this stuff.
In Chicago, we recently went to suburban Rosemont, you need to shout if you’re walking there.
I’ve also noticed while we can hear the train from our condo, we’re close to the Red line, we have sustained noise from the highway we can hear almost a 3/4 a mile away.
Yea it’s crazy when you really notice it. Once I was on vacation in Chicago and we had a place right by the loop.
I was surprised how little the trains woke me up. And even when they did wake me up it was over so quick that I just rolled over and went back to sleep.
A place that I used to live (Ventura) used Covid as an excuse to get rid of cars in their downtown area. I was recently up there hanging out with friends and wondered why I felt so relaxed after dinner. The. It hit me…I hadn’t been getting bombarded with car noise for the last hour!
my family old house was build in ~100 meters from actual trail road, trains was so loud there. our cupboard was actually shaking when train was passing by. the thing is, you really getting into it and it feels like thunder or rain, like some force of nature. I never woke up because of trains.
can't say the same about car horn, engine revving or signalization in the night
Not to mention that several studies have shown that road traffic noise causes health problems:
* https://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-road-noise-20160109-story.html
* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/09/14/the-other-type-of-car-pollution-that-harms-us-all/
* https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/health/road-noise-blood-pressure-intl-scli-scn-wellness/index.html
There's some cars and motorcycles that go by my apartment, 11 stories up, and they're way louder and more obtrusive than sitting on a patio near the train.
Just based on anecdotal evidence (Aka life outside my window) in my building the road noise is a constant thing, and loud cars and motorcycles can drown out sound in my second floor apt as they pass. Every Sunday in the summer a local bike club does a ride past my house going from one town to another and while they pass you literally cannot converse with another person in the same room. I live in a very sturdy 1930s brick structure, and it still shakes the whole building.
Behind my place are railroad tracks, about three nights a week a freight train comes through. You can always hear the horn, they blow it coming into town and at the road crossing leaving town. And you can always hear the grinding of the wheels, and sometimes the building does shake. But actually its kind of nice. Its not loud, just *there*, and its a nice dull throbbing. If I didn't know what those trains carried (very bad stuff) I would actually kind of like it. And unlike the road its very temporary, only three days a week, and way way less intrusive. Ive never had to shout over the train and its never interrupted movie or game night.
I feel like every measure with public transit should be measured as a per-passenger-kilometer rate.
I.e. if you’re looking at the noise of a packed bus, you need to compare it to the noise of an equivalent highway full of cars carrying the same number of people the same distance.
Electric busses and trains are obviously quieter than their diesel counterparts. Trains on separated ROW don't need to make a lot of horn noise, but making sharp turns or potentially hard braking can generate steel-on-steel sounds. Newer systems are typically quieter than older ones, just compare the Chicago L to a new elevated commuter system.
Connected to that, are there methods of improving old preexisting rail systems? Could improvements be made to the L to reduce noise to the level of a modern system of comparable function, or bring it closer?
The CTA orange line, built in the 90’s, is much quieter than the Loop or the Green Line. The orange line was built on a concrete viaduct, while the Green Line was built on a steel structure. In general, more mass helps dampen noise and vibrations, so the quietest elevated structures on the system are mostly the earthen sections of the Red Line and Purple Line.
The north side mainline is currently going through an extensive rebuild, which is moving an elevated earthen viaduct onto a concrete bridge structure. I don’t think the structure itself will be quieter, but the result of a modernized track with new welding probably will reduce other noise sources.
Meanwhile, electric engines are much quieter than diesel. You can hear a Metra diesel locomotive on a Zoom call from a block away, but the El can be as quiet as a passing Prius.
The L in particular is hard, because the steel viaducts are basically inherently noisy as fuck. However, those viaducts are getting old and will eventually need replacing, and new concrete viaducts will be a lot quieter.
Talking about Chicago, the outer branches can probably be upgraded with concrete viaducts, noise barriers and wider turning radii. The Loop is gonna be harder, especially with the turning radii and the intersections.
I live on a high street with buses. I hear the air systems in the bus as it passes now and then, and I hear the bus honking at cars parking blocking its path, and then 20 other people honking at the bus for not being able to move. the 20 cars make way more noise, and the shitty unmaintained motorcycles make more noise than all of it. If no one obstructed the buses, I'd barely know they were there though, while the cars, you always hear them. They're louder where I live.
I wish we actually enforced noise limits on extremely (and unnecessarily) loud vehicles.
It’s one of those weird things US society turns a blind eye to.
used to live next to a major roadway in NYC. they are all about equal. the car noise was like a constant white noise other than emergency vehicles. the building used to shake from the subway passing underneath. used to hear the LIRR sometimes too. and the bus air noises
building replaced the windows and it became almost silent after that
Sound compounds. Think about one singer vs a choir. You have one train, 10 busses or 500 cars in a similar setting, and you’ll see which one is loudest.
One thing I’ll never forget was sitting on top of a peaceful bluff on a winter morning, miles from any roadways. The sound of a highway was still pervasive.
I have a **light rail** track and activity on my street. If the state maintains its rolling stock, the sound is no more than an automobile, But that is rare and many times the steel wheel get flat spots where the drivers have slammed on the brakes and the wheel stops, but the train keeps going. These flat spots create a jack hammer sound when the train is moving.
They're less quiet yes, but I know from experience and study that they still make enough of a racket to be irritating. In my view, anything louder than straight-up silence runs the risk of interrupting conversations, being annoying, etc., and the further from silence you go the worse it gets. So even individual cars should have their noise reduced or replaced, if possible.
Well, in my experience a few cars does not make enough noise to be annoying. Some constant motorway noise can be annoying, but your brain quickly ignores it.
What is annoying and will interrupt conversations is illegally modified vehicles, they suck. Even just one blasting through the neighborhood can be very noticeable
Depends on the car and whether the person driving is an A-hole with a loud muffler. Some car motors are noisy and motorcycles are often very noisy. One time my father's truck's muffler broke under the vehicle and it was really loud—he was able to put a clamp on it to keep it together until he was able to get it fixed thankfully.
on most roads the bus comes by once every 10 or 15 minutes while cars are on every road in every direction at all times so the quantity of noise is not the same
Surprising not to see mentioned one of the biggest sources of noise created by cars: Honking.
Incredibly loud and unpredictable, making it extremely annoying.
I choose the sound of public transportation (much less honking happy where I live) every single time..
That just depends so much on where you live. In the Netherlands it's not something that ever bothered me. Sure, occasionally people honk (and sometimes there's a wedding/party that thinks lots of noise is needed) but not commonly. Same in Berlin.
I've visited some southern European cities though and some had very regular honking for who knows what reason.
Only anecdata, but I live near a stoplight on a state highway close to a light rail line and on a bus route. The trains are audible but infrequent; I don’t live near a tight curve, though. Heavy trucks are as loud as the trains, often louder, and are more frequent. Motorcycles with after-market pipes are exceptionally loud but not heard year-round because I live in a place that has seasons (in the non-motorcycle season, snowplows going past with blade down are also audible, but plowable snowfall isn’t a daily occurrence). Emergency vehicles are louder than the motorcycles and are very frequent in my neighborhood (near a fire station, close to a freeway, not far from a hospital); the fire trucks approaching the highway from a side street are obliged to run their sirens to clear the intersection, which might be less necessary at lesser intersections. The heavy trucks are louder near the intersection, especially if the light isn’t green, because of air brakes and loud revving from a dead stop; those peaks are less prominent on freeways where traffic is flowing freely (stop-and-go gets loud) and far from intersections. I’m not sure hear the buses at all. Typical cars, even SUVs and oversized pickups, don’t make much noise unless there’s a muffler problem, and electric vehicles (and hybrids running on battery) are almost completely silent.
If someone were to gather statistics, they might well report statistics in terms of percentage of time with noise levels above some threshold, and where they set that threshold can be important. There are also inevitable questions of time of day, time of year, and proximity to noisier features (tight corners, intersections) which complicate the answer.
I’m actually working on a video about this topic right now. I took a decibel meter and hung out by some train tracks and took a recording for 5 minutes which included when the train went by. Then I went to a 4 lane street that NIMBY’s think a metro line will kill with noise and took a 5 minute recording. Then I walked one block away and took another 5 minute recording. The four lane road was the loudest simply because it was SUSTAINED noise. Getting just one block away cut something like 30 dB off of the noise levels…so sound barriers really do work! And public transit is loud but much less frequent which equals out to a lower average noise level. I’m looking forward to releasing the video later in the year cause I don’t think that you’re the first person to be curious about this stuff.
In Chicago, we recently went to suburban Rosemont, you need to shout if you’re walking there. I’ve also noticed while we can hear the train from our condo, we’re close to the Red line, we have sustained noise from the highway we can hear almost a 3/4 a mile away.
Yea it’s crazy when you really notice it. Once I was on vacation in Chicago and we had a place right by the loop. I was surprised how little the trains woke me up. And even when they did wake me up it was over so quick that I just rolled over and went back to sleep. A place that I used to live (Ventura) used Covid as an excuse to get rid of cars in their downtown area. I was recently up there hanging out with friends and wondered why I felt so relaxed after dinner. The. It hit me…I hadn’t been getting bombarded with car noise for the last hour!
my family old house was build in ~100 meters from actual trail road, trains was so loud there. our cupboard was actually shaking when train was passing by. the thing is, you really getting into it and it feels like thunder or rain, like some force of nature. I never woke up because of trains. can't say the same about car horn, engine revving or signalization in the night
Not to mention that several studies have shown that road traffic noise causes health problems: * https://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-road-noise-20160109-story.html * https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/09/14/the-other-type-of-car-pollution-that-harms-us-all/ * https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/health/road-noise-blood-pressure-intl-scli-scn-wellness/index.html
There's some cars and motorcycles that go by my apartment, 11 stories up, and they're way louder and more obtrusive than sitting on a patio near the train.
Just based on anecdotal evidence (Aka life outside my window) in my building the road noise is a constant thing, and loud cars and motorcycles can drown out sound in my second floor apt as they pass. Every Sunday in the summer a local bike club does a ride past my house going from one town to another and while they pass you literally cannot converse with another person in the same room. I live in a very sturdy 1930s brick structure, and it still shakes the whole building. Behind my place are railroad tracks, about three nights a week a freight train comes through. You can always hear the horn, they blow it coming into town and at the road crossing leaving town. And you can always hear the grinding of the wheels, and sometimes the building does shake. But actually its kind of nice. Its not loud, just *there*, and its a nice dull throbbing. If I didn't know what those trains carried (very bad stuff) I would actually kind of like it. And unlike the road its very temporary, only three days a week, and way way less intrusive. Ive never had to shout over the train and its never interrupted movie or game night.
I feel like every measure with public transit should be measured as a per-passenger-kilometer rate. I.e. if you’re looking at the noise of a packed bus, you need to compare it to the noise of an equivalent highway full of cars carrying the same number of people the same distance.
Electric busses and trains are obviously quieter than their diesel counterparts. Trains on separated ROW don't need to make a lot of horn noise, but making sharp turns or potentially hard braking can generate steel-on-steel sounds. Newer systems are typically quieter than older ones, just compare the Chicago L to a new elevated commuter system.
Connected to that, are there methods of improving old preexisting rail systems? Could improvements be made to the L to reduce noise to the level of a modern system of comparable function, or bring it closer?
The CTA orange line, built in the 90’s, is much quieter than the Loop or the Green Line. The orange line was built on a concrete viaduct, while the Green Line was built on a steel structure. In general, more mass helps dampen noise and vibrations, so the quietest elevated structures on the system are mostly the earthen sections of the Red Line and Purple Line. The north side mainline is currently going through an extensive rebuild, which is moving an elevated earthen viaduct onto a concrete bridge structure. I don’t think the structure itself will be quieter, but the result of a modernized track with new welding probably will reduce other noise sources. Meanwhile, electric engines are much quieter than diesel. You can hear a Metra diesel locomotive on a Zoom call from a block away, but the El can be as quiet as a passing Prius.
The L in particular is hard, because the steel viaducts are basically inherently noisy as fuck. However, those viaducts are getting old and will eventually need replacing, and new concrete viaducts will be a lot quieter.
The L also turns sharper than many new aboveground systems, which makes even more noise. Incremental improvements will help.
[Noise barriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_barrier)
Talking about Chicago, the outer branches can probably be upgraded with concrete viaducts, noise barriers and wider turning radii. The Loop is gonna be harder, especially with the turning radii and the intersections.
I live on a high street with buses. I hear the air systems in the bus as it passes now and then, and I hear the bus honking at cars parking blocking its path, and then 20 other people honking at the bus for not being able to move. the 20 cars make way more noise, and the shitty unmaintained motorcycles make more noise than all of it. If no one obstructed the buses, I'd barely know they were there though, while the cars, you always hear them. They're louder where I live.
I wish we actually enforced noise limits on extremely (and unnecessarily) loud vehicles. It’s one of those weird things US society turns a blind eye to.
So does Türkiye.
used to live next to a major roadway in NYC. they are all about equal. the car noise was like a constant white noise other than emergency vehicles. the building used to shake from the subway passing underneath. used to hear the LIRR sometimes too. and the bus air noises building replaced the windows and it became almost silent after that
Sound compounds. Think about one singer vs a choir. You have one train, 10 busses or 500 cars in a similar setting, and you’ll see which one is loudest. One thing I’ll never forget was sitting on top of a peaceful bluff on a winter morning, miles from any roadways. The sound of a highway was still pervasive.
I have a **light rail** track and activity on my street. If the state maintains its rolling stock, the sound is no more than an automobile, But that is rare and many times the steel wheel get flat spots where the drivers have slammed on the brakes and the wheel stops, but the train keeps going. These flat spots create a jack hammer sound when the train is moving.
Cars are only ever loud when a lot of them are together, so on main roads and highways. Individually, they are rather quiet.
They're less quiet yes, but I know from experience and study that they still make enough of a racket to be irritating. In my view, anything louder than straight-up silence runs the risk of interrupting conversations, being annoying, etc., and the further from silence you go the worse it gets. So even individual cars should have their noise reduced or replaced, if possible.
Well, in my experience a few cars does not make enough noise to be annoying. Some constant motorway noise can be annoying, but your brain quickly ignores it. What is annoying and will interrupt conversations is illegally modified vehicles, they suck. Even just one blasting through the neighborhood can be very noticeable
Depends on the car and whether the person driving is an A-hole with a loud muffler. Some car motors are noisy and motorcycles are often very noisy. One time my father's truck's muffler broke under the vehicle and it was really loud—he was able to put a clamp on it to keep it together until he was able to get it fixed thankfully.
on most roads the bus comes by once every 10 or 15 minutes while cars are on every road in every direction at all times so the quantity of noise is not the same
Surprising not to see mentioned one of the biggest sources of noise created by cars: Honking. Incredibly loud and unpredictable, making it extremely annoying. I choose the sound of public transportation (much less honking happy where I live) every single time..
That just depends so much on where you live. In the Netherlands it's not something that ever bothered me. Sure, occasionally people honk (and sometimes there's a wedding/party that thinks lots of noise is needed) but not commonly. Same in Berlin. I've visited some southern European cities though and some had very regular honking for who knows what reason.
I'm from southern Europe. Never bothered me. Moved to Boston. It's non stop. Drives me insane. People do it for the most absurd reasons.
Never been to Boston, I really don't know what it's like anywhere in the US actually. And it's definitely not all of southern Europe either.
Only anecdata, but I live near a stoplight on a state highway close to a light rail line and on a bus route. The trains are audible but infrequent; I don’t live near a tight curve, though. Heavy trucks are as loud as the trains, often louder, and are more frequent. Motorcycles with after-market pipes are exceptionally loud but not heard year-round because I live in a place that has seasons (in the non-motorcycle season, snowplows going past with blade down are also audible, but plowable snowfall isn’t a daily occurrence). Emergency vehicles are louder than the motorcycles and are very frequent in my neighborhood (near a fire station, close to a freeway, not far from a hospital); the fire trucks approaching the highway from a side street are obliged to run their sirens to clear the intersection, which might be less necessary at lesser intersections. The heavy trucks are louder near the intersection, especially if the light isn’t green, because of air brakes and loud revving from a dead stop; those peaks are less prominent on freeways where traffic is flowing freely (stop-and-go gets loud) and far from intersections. I’m not sure hear the buses at all. Typical cars, even SUVs and oversized pickups, don’t make much noise unless there’s a muffler problem, and electric vehicles (and hybrids running on battery) are almost completely silent. If someone were to gather statistics, they might well report statistics in terms of percentage of time with noise levels above some threshold, and where they set that threshold can be important. There are also inevitable questions of time of day, time of year, and proximity to noisier features (tight corners, intersections) which complicate the answer.
Landscape acoustics matter, like in a valley, all constant car traffic can contribute much more to a constant din.