I stayed in a hotel in a city recently. I wish the cars were the loudest thing. There was an ice-skating rink blasting music until after midnight and then a jackhammer at 6am. Needless to say, I didn't sleep well.
I get that, there are always going to be outliers, but "cars" are the right answer to the noise pollution question for the vast majority of the population. Construction is a valid one too, but that one is unavoidable except for all the car infrastructure.
Maybe for you but I’ve stayed in plenty of extremely urban areas in the US and abroad. The traffic noise was at worst a light background noise, white noise if you will.
The noises that bothered me were the live music from downstairs blasting into my room after midnight, people making a ruckus in the halls outside my room, people yelling on the street, loud emergency services vehicles.
Just like in an airplane it isn’t the sound of the aircraft that is annoying to me but the guy two rows in front talking to his bros.
The nice thing is I live in the suburbs and don’t hear any of the above and I also don’t hear traffic noise. The worst I hear is an occasional landscaping crew or circular saw but those don’t happen at 1 am.
I used to travel to SF regularly, including after the removal of cars from market street. Additionally, i stayed on market street because of the ease of access to the offices i needed to go to. if cars are in fact the problem, how come market street is still loud enough today, with no cars, at 2 AM, to bleed enough sound through a double pane window with dense curtains?
cars are not the problem. anybody with any experience in life knows the more stuff and people you cram in a small area, the more noise (an heat for all you climate changers)