[Dylovell]

I have lived on a street with a street car for the past 3 years and I disagree with your perspective. I live in a different city, so variables are probably very different in a lot of ways. I find large trucks and motorcycles as the largest disturbances in my daily life (I work from home mostly). The train absolutely makes noise and shakes the house, but it's predictable. I no longer set alarms and I can use it to run my errands. And it is way better for the air around me than cars. Most of the US lives in a mono-culture for transportation and cars are pretty expensive.

[MichaelCollins]

In my case, the street car noise was roughly comparable to a garbage truck, but much more frequent. Significantly louder than a diesel bus though, and not as flexible. Better than diesel buses are trolley-buses; electric buses that use overhead power lines like the trolley, but with rubber road tires instead of train rails. Those are really quite, but aren't as flexible with rerouting as diesel buses. But between the trolley-buses and diesel buses, I think streetcars don't have much of a niche. I just don't see why a city today would opt to install streetcars if they could use trolley-buses instead.

Motorcycles are definitely the worst offenders though. Not all motorcycles are loud, but the loud ones are really loud.