Noise Levels in Garden Acres, CA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
56 dBA
Average noise across Garden Acres
Quiet office to normal conversation
4,928
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
46% of Garden Acres residents
81 dBA
Loudest residential point
Food blender at arm’s length
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Garden Acres 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 4,928 Garden Acres residents, or 45.8%, live above that level. By land area, 47.7% of Garden Acres is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Garden Acres residents, grouped by direction from the center of Garden Acres. Western Garden Acres carries the highest population-weighted average; Eastern Garden Acres carries the lowest. Just 25% of residents in Eastern Garden Acres live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, a third of the share in Western Garden Acres.
Central Garden Acres
53.9 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
33% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Garden Acres
51.7 dBA · Moderate
Quiet office to normal conversation
25% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Garden Acres
55.0 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
38% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Garden Acres
57.4 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
56% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Garden Acres
60.6 dBA · Loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
79% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Garden Acres sounds about 85% louder than Eastern Garden Acres to the human ear, a 8.9 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 State Rte 99 do you need to be?
State Rte 99 produces an estimated 77 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 quiet suburban street at night.
At source
77 dBA
City bus interior
165 ft
64 dBA
Busy restaurant
330 ft
57 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
660 ft
50 dBA
Quiet office
¼ mile
43 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
½ mile
36 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 3% of Garden Acres sits under tree canopy (much lighter than most cities) and roughly 42% 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 Garden Acres. 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.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Garden Acres
The bar chart below shows the share of Garden Acres residents in each noise band. About 57% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 14% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Garden Acres Compares
Garden Acres sits at the louder end of the spectrum. Below: how Garden Acres's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Country Club, August, Escalon, and Banta.
Average noise level (dBA)
Garden Acres's 55.6 dBA pop-weighted average is at the louder end of the spectrum. California as a whole averages 54.0 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Garden Acres because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 45.8% of Garden Acres 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, 47.7% of Garden Acres's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a California average of 36.0% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Garden Acres
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 State Rte 99 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 3% of Garden Acres is under tree cover (much lighter than most cities), and the dominant land cover is low-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.
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.
