[ehnto]

Quieter too. When wandering Tokyo I started asking myself, why does it feel so quiet when there are so many people and so much advertising? Then you hit one of the roads with cars, and you realise just how much road noise impacts a space. It is obvious in theory but I bet most of us in car-centric cities have learned to live with it so much, that it doesn't cross our minds as the source of discomfort.

[stevenwoo]

I go on long rides on my bicycle between San Jose and San Francisco listening to audiobooks for background entertainment. I could listen to these at the same volume I listen to at home while taking it easy, unless there is a motor vehicle passing by, then sometimes no volume is loud enough to make the audio intelligible until the vehicle has gone far enough away.

[ajmurmann]

I for a long time was also wondering because so many of the streets look so much more charming. I only understood why once I read that there is almost no street parking in Japan. Once I knew that, it became obvious that that's at least part of the reason.

[giraffe_lady]

"Cities aren't loud, cars are loud."

[yourusername]

Said someone that has never lived across the street from a elevated subway, on a street with a streetcar or near a bus stop.

[dang]

Please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points about transportation infrastructure without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[sofixa]

Depends on the quality of the infrastructure. I live in a metropolitan area with elevated metros, suburban and long distance trains, cargo trains, trams (streetcars in american), etc. and it vastly differs. Paris line 6 makes a lot of noise due to the rubber tires and frequent turns (it's a semicircle line), meanwhile modern trams and modernised suburban rail (RER A) are barely audible even next to the tracks, let alone in buildings nearby.

[ehnto]

I lived next to a freight line, never again. The corner was in my backyard. My comment is mostly about daily life outside of the house, and in a city center. So those moments on foot when you're out of the car.

For life in the city, it's much more pleasant to be in a foot only or mixed traffic street, even with a train nearby. There's the inherent danger of fast cars operated by non-professionals that you perceive on foot as well as the noise, neither you really need to worry about for trains. In many cities trams can run through pedestrian areas with no barricades or grade separation because they are slower and predictable. You can run cars with no separation too if you slow them down enough, but more often they are set to incompatible speeds and as a pedestrian you have all the downsides of the cars as they pass through what should really be a pedestrian space in most city centers.

[crote]

What is louder: 1 subway train, or 200 cars?

[KptMarchewa]

More like 500-800 cars, given that one car carries 1.3 people on average.

[rootusrootus]

It's a different kind of sound. Tire noise is white noise (or at least, similar). My experience working in close proximity to a light rail line was 1) the train shakes the ground as it goes by, and 2) if you're near a corner, the squeaking is pretty loud. We have water sprayers in those areas to try and cut down on the howling, but it's not a panacea.

[foepys]

That's just bad design. There very quiet tram and railway designs available - they just cost a bit more money than the cheap 19th century designs that are still in place.

Where I live in Germany the passenger trains (not even the tracks) got upgraded a few years ago and all those click-clack and screeching sounds are gone. What is left is a wooshing sound of the wind being pushed aside and the not-so-loud grinding sound of the thingy (collector?) that hits the power cable.

[NovemberWhiskey]

1 subway train.

In real tests done in NYC, the mean dbA for subway platforms was 81.1 vs. 76.0 for buses (which, by definition, run on the roads)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707461/

[paradox460]

And Bart makes the NYC subway sound quiet

[giraffe_lady]

The saying isn't "only cars are loud" smartass.

And I've lived across from from an elevated transit line in an otherwise carless city center and it was quieter than any north american subwayless city I've lived in so this isn't even true lol.

[Tade0]

Or a cargo rail line.

Or my favorite: historical buildings with equally historical distances between them. You could go deaf just from clapping your hands there.

[danjoredd]

Even in the middle of the country you can hear cars. I lived in the country and you could see the road about a mile away, and when I put my ear to the ground I could still hear the cars when one would pass by every once in a while