About How Loud Is This Address?
Buyers tend to find out about the flight path, the freight line or the highway on-ramp after they have moved in. Listings never mention it, and a Saturday-afternoon viewing is exactly when you will not hear it. This tool looks the address up on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Transportation Noise Map and tells you the 24-hour average noise level the national model puts there — split into road, aviation and rail, so you can tell which one it is.
The map is the 2022 edition published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics in May 2026 (aviation and rail traffic from 2022, road traffic from 2023). BTS publishes it only as map images, so we read the colour of the pixel under the address and decode it against the map’s own legend. The decoding is checked pixel-for-pixel across the separate road, aviation, rail and combined maps.
Said plainly, in BTS’s own terms: this is simplified national modelling meant for tracking trends, not an assessment of an individual location. It works in bands, at about 30 metres per pixel, and it only knows about highways, major roads, airports and railways. Use it to decide which houses deserve a second visit at rush hour and after dark — not in place of that visit.
The address above is the first column. Add up to three more you are considering.
Every address you have checked or compared, with its road, aviation and rail bands and the direction of the main source — one page to take to viewings, with space for what you actually heard.
How to Check How Noisy an Address Is
Type the full street address and press How Loud. The tool finds the address, then reads the national noise map four times — once for all transportation sources combined and once each for road, aviation and rail — at the pixel under the address. The hero figure is the combined band; the three cards show where it comes from. If the address resolves only to a town or a street rather than a house number, the result is for that point, so use a precise address for a precise answer.
What the National Transportation Noise Map Is
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, publishes the National Transportation Noise Map every two years. It models the sound from highway traffic (using federal traffic counts for interstates, highways and major arterials), commercial aviation (from FAA flight operations) and rail, and it reports the result as a 24-hour equivalent A-weighted level, LAeq, for an average day of the year. The 2022 edition used aviation and rail data from 2022 and road data from 2023 and was released in May 2026. Areas below 45 dB are left blank on the map: at that level transportation is not a meaningful contributor.
Reading the Decibel Bands
Decibels are logarithmic. Ten decibels more is ten times the sound energy and sounds roughly twice as loud, so the difference between a 50 dB and a 60 dB band is large. Because LAeq is an energy average, it is dominated by the loudest events: a house with quiet streets but twenty jet overflights an hour can average higher than a house on a steady, moderately busy road. That is also why the combined band can be higher than any single source — two sources at the same level add up to about 3 dB more.
- Below 45 dB — not mapped; no major transportation source is contributing much on average.
- 45–55 dB — typical of residential areas a few blocks from a main road or on the outer edge of an airport’s footprint.
- 55–70 dB — next to busy arterials and highways, along active rail lines, and under approach paths.
- 70 dB and above — beside interstates, at runway ends and in rail yards. Few homes sit in these bands, and the ones that do are hard to make quiet.
The Reference Levels, and Why the Metrics Differ
The EPA’s 1974 “Levels Document” identified a day-night level of 55 dB outdoors as the level protecting residential areas from activity interference and annoyance with an adequate margin of safety. The FAA treats a day-night level of 65 dB as the threshold of significant aircraft noise impact for homes, and HUD rates sites above 65 dB as normally unacceptable for housing it funds, and above 75 dB as unacceptable. The World Health Organization’s 2018 guidelines go lower: 53 dB for road traffic, 54 dB for rail and 45 dB for aircraft, on the day-evening-night metric.
Those thresholds use day-night metrics that add a penalty to night-time noise, so the same place scores a few decibels higher on them than on the plain 24-hour average shown here. When this map puts an address within a few dB below a threshold, assume it is at or above it on the regulatory metric.
What to Do With the Answer
- Visit at the right times. Weekday rush hour for roads; early morning and late evening for airports, when departures and arrivals bunch up; night for freight rail.
- Check the airport’s own noise maps. Airports with FAA Part 150 studies publish detailed contours and runway-use patterns; a house can sit under a path that is only used in certain winds.
- Think about the layout. Bedrooms on the side facing away from the source, and a solid building between you and a highway, are worth several decibels indoors.
- Price it in. Noise is one of the few defects you cannot renovate away, and resale buyers will notice it too.
Related tools: the Property Hazard Risk Profiler covers flood, wildfire, earthquake and the other natural hazards at the same address; the Home Affordability Calculator and Rent vs Buy Calculator handle the money side of the decision. Browse every Home & Real Estate tool for more.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is the noise level for a single house?
Treat it as a screening indicator, not a measurement. The DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics builds the map with simplified national noise models and says plainly that it should not be used to evaluate individual locations or specific times, or for regulatory purposes. The map works in bands (for example 60–69.9 dB), at roughly 30 metres per pixel, and it models highways and major roads, airports and rail lines — not the neighbour's dog, a school playground or a local street. If it says an address sits in a loud band, that is a strong reason to visit at rush hour and at night before you commit.
What does LAeq mean?
LAeq is the equivalent continuous A-weighted sound level: the steady level that would carry the same sound energy as the real, fluctuating noise over the period — here 24 hours of an average day. A-weighting follows how human hearing responds to different pitches. Because it is an energy average, a few very loud events (a jet overhead, a freight train) raise it a lot, while a long quiet night lowers it. Many regulations use DNL (day-night level), which adds 10 dB to noise between 10 pm and 7 am; DNL at a location is therefore usually a few decibels higher than its 24-hour LAeq.
How loud is 60 decibels?
Decibels are logarithmic: every 10 dB step is ten times the sound energy and is heard as roughly twice as loud. On this map, a 24-hour average of 60–70 dB is typically found beside busy arterial roads, close to highways and under approach paths near airports. 45–55 dB is what a residential area a few blocks from a main road usually shows, and anything below 45 dB is not mapped at all — no major transportation source is contributing much on average.
Why does the map say my street is quiet when it is not?
The national model covers roads in the federal Highway Performance Monitoring System — interstates, highways and major arterials — plus commercial airports and the rail network. Local residential streets, construction, industry, sirens, bars and leaf blowers are not in it. It also averages over a whole year, so a route that is only busy in commuting hours, or an airport runway used only in certain winds, is smoothed out. When the map and your ears disagree, your ears are measuring something the model does not include.
Does road noise affect property value?
Consistently, yes. Hedonic price studies — which compare otherwise similar homes — find that homes exposed to more traffic and aircraft noise sell for less. Researchers summarise it as a noise depreciation index, the percentage of value lost per decibel above a background level; meta-analyses of airport studies put it at roughly half a percent per decibel, and road-noise estimates spread more widely. The exact figure varies by market and by study. The practical point for a buyer is that noise is hard to fix after closing — double glazing helps indoors, nothing helps the garden — so it is worth knowing before you make an offer.
