Noise Levels in Ball Square, Somerville, MA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
56 dBA
Average noise across Ball Square
Quiet office to normal conversation
3,082
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
57% of Ball Square residents
65 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Ball Square at 100-meter resolution, combining road, aviation, and rail sources. Green areas measure below 45 dBA. Orange and red exceed the EPA's 55 dBA outdoor threshold linked to long-term health effects. Use the layer toggles to view each source on its own or all together.
Overall
Road
Rail
Aviation
Click the map to explore
35 dBa55 dBa (EPA limit)90+ dBa
3545557090
Quietest (dBA)Loudest
Colorblind friendlyoff
What the numbers sound like
30 dBAWhisper
40 dBASoft rainfall
45 dBAQuiet suburban street at night
50 dBAQuiet office
55 dBAEPA outdoor threshold: light traffic 100 ft away
60 dBANormal conversation an arm's length away
65 dBABusy restaurant
70 dBAHighway traffic 50 ft away
80 dBACity bus interior
Population Above the EPA Outdoor Threshold
The EPA's 55 dBA outdoor reference level is a common benchmark for residential noise exposure, especially for activity interference, annoyance, and long-term community noise concerns. About 3,082 Ball Square residents, or 57.0%, live above that level. By land area, 60.4% of Ball Square is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Ball Square residents, grouped by direction from the center of Ball Square. Eastern Ball Square carries the highest population-weighted average; Central Ball Square carries the lowest. Just 54% of residents in Central Ball Square live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, roughly the same as the share in Eastern Ball Square.
Central Ball Square
55.2 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
54% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Ball Square
57.0 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
58% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Ball Square
57.0 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
70% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Ball Square
56.4 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
69% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Ball Square sounds about 13% louder than Central Ball Square to the human ear, a 1.8 dBA gap. Every 10 dBA roughly doubles perceived loudness. Within any of these directions, two homes a quarter mile apart can still differ by 10 or more dBA depending on how close they sit to a major highway.
How far back from do you need to be?
produces an estimated 65 dBA at its loudest centerline points. Noise drops logarithmically with distance, with the exact rate depending on what's between you and the road. Tree cover, walls, terrain, and pavement type all matter. At roughly a quarter mile back, traffic fades into the noise level of a soft rainfall.
At source
65 dBA
Busy restaurant
165 ft
51 dBA
Quiet office
330 ft
43 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
660 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
¼ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
½ mile
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 16% of Ball Square sits under tree canopy (about average for neighborhoods) and roughly 71% is impervious surface like pavement and rooftops. Both are folded into the per-place decay rate above. Heavier canopy pulls noise down faster with distance; impervious surfaces slow the drop.
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Rail Noise
Active freight rail runs through parts of Ball Square. For most blocks the rail-only contribution is small. Combined road-plus-rail noise rarely exceeds road noise on its own. The exceptions are the handful of blocks within roughly a quarter mile of the right-of-way during pass-through hours.
Use the Rail toggle on the map above to isolate rail's contribution from road and aviation.
Airport Noise
General Edward Lawrence Logan International (BOS) sits southeast of Ball Square. The U.S. Department of Transportation measures aviation noise around this airport directly, and the model uses those federal measurements rather than synthetic predictions.
Blocks under the approach and departure paths carry combined road-plus-aviation noise, with some exceeding 45 dBA on the map's Overall layer. Blocks on the opposite side of Ball Square, particularly to the northwest, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Ball Square
The bar chart below shows the share of Ball Square residents in each noise band. About 30% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 10% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Ball Square Compares
Ball Square sits at the quieter end of the spectrum. Below: how Ball Square's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with West Somerville, Cushing Square, Bowdoin Apartments, and Bemis.
Average noise level (dBA)
Ball Square's 55.6 dBA pop-weighted average is at the quieter end of the spectrum. Massachusetts as a whole averages 54.3 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Ball Square because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 57.0% of Ball Square residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's in the middle of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 60.4% of Ball Square's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Massachusetts average of 40.0% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Ball Square
Distance from highways matters more than the neighborhood name. Two homes in the same zip code can differ by 20 dBA if one sits 100 meters from and the other 500 meters away. The model captures this at 100-meter resolution, so noise exposure changes block by block.
Tree canopy can help reduce modeled noise exposure. Roughly 16% of Ball Square is under tree cover (about average for neighborhoods), and the dominant land cover is medium-intensity developed land. Both are measured from federal USDA Forest Service and USGS satellite imagery at 30-meter resolution. Streets with 60% or higher canopy show 3 to 5 dBA lower noise than comparable streets with bare ground or pavement, which is why the per-place decay rate above already accounts for it.
Airport noise is directional. General Edward Lawrence Logan International's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the southeast. Neighborhoods to the northwest of downtown show no measurable contribution from the airport.
Sources & Methodology
The BestNeighborhood noise model is calibrated against nearly one million federal ground-truth measurements across four states. Road noise is computed from segment-level federal traffic data and propagated outward using physics-based acoustic decay, with attenuation rates that depend on the surrounding land cover.
All inputs are published federal datasets. Block-level noise is computed by combining road, rail, and aviation sound sources in the energy domain, the same physics used in professional environmental noise assessments. Read the full methodology.
