Noise Levels in Forbes Road, PA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map

43 dBA
Average noise across Forbes Road
Quiet suburban street at night
12
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
3% of Forbes Road residents
62 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant

This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Forbes Road 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
Forbes Road, PA Map of Noise Levels in Forbes Road
Click the map to explore
35 45 55 70 90
Quietest (dBA) Loudest
Colorblind friendly off

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 12 Forbes Road residents, or 3.0%, live above that level. By land area, 31.2% of Forbes Road is above 55 dBA.

See how noise in Forbes Road compares to similar-sized cities.

Noise by Part of Forbes Road

Average noise levels for Forbes Road residents, grouped by direction from the center of Forbes Road. Southern Forbes Road carries the highest population-weighted average; Eastern Forbes Road carries the lowest. Just 1% of residents in Eastern Forbes Road live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a third of the share in Southern Forbes Road.

Eastern Forbes Road

42.2 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

1% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern Forbes Road

45.6 dBA · Mostly quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

3% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Western Forbes Road

44.1 dBA · Quiet
Quiet suburban street at night

7% of people above 55 dBA

QuietLoud

Southern Forbes Road sounds about 27% louder than Eastern Forbes Road to the human ear, a 3.4 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 Emfv Fire Station Rd do you need to be?

Emfv Fire Station Rd produces an estimated 52 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
52 dBA
Quiet office to normal conversation
165 ft
38 dBA
Soft rainfall
330 ft
35 dBA
Soft rainfall
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 30% of Forbes Road sits under tree canopy (about average for cities) and roughly 16% 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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How Noise Is Distributed Across Forbes Road

The bar chart below shows the share of Forbes Road residents in each noise band. About 100% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 0% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.

How Forbes Road Compares

Forbes Road sits the lowest among the peer group. Below: how Forbes Road's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Crabtree, Adamsburg, North Irwin, and Hannastown.

Average noise level (dBA)

Forbes Road's 43.3 dBA pop-weighted average is the lowest among the peer group. Pennsylvania as a whole averages 52.9 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Forbes Road because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.

Share of residents above 55 dBA

About 3.0% of Forbes Road residents live in blocks where outdoor levels exceed the EPA's 55 dBA threshold. That's fewer than any of its peer group. Measured by land area instead, 31.2% of Forbes Road's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Pennsylvania average of 33.5% and a national average of 28.1%.

What This Means if You're Moving to Forbes Road

  • 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 Emfv Fire Station Rd 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 30% of Forbes Road is under tree cover (about average for cities), and the dominant land cover is low-density developed open space. 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.

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.

Federal datasets used:

FHWA Highway Performance Monitoring System: road geometry, traffic counts, lane configuration
U.S. DoT Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Transportation Noise Map: aviation and rail noise, road calibration ground truth
USGS / MRLC National Land Cover Database: land cover and impervious surface coverage
USDA Forest Service Tree Canopy Cover: vegetation density for sound propagation
U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line: block-level geography and population
U.S. EPA Levels Document: 55 dBA outdoor reference level

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.

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