Noise Levels in Long Beach, IN | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
55 dBA
Average noise across Long Beach
Quiet office to normal conversation
620
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
46% of Long Beach residents
64 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Long Beach 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 620 Long Beach residents, or 46.3%, live above that level. By land area, 48.2% of Long Beach is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Long Beach residents, grouped by direction from the center of Long Beach. Eastern Long Beach carries the highest population-weighted average; Central Long Beach carries the lowest. Just 38% of residents in Central Long Beach live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, three-quarters of the share in Eastern Long Beach.
Central Long Beach
54.3 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
38% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Long Beach
56.4 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
54% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Long Beach
55.7 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
52% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Long Beach
54.7 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
43% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Long Beach sounds about 16% louder than Central Long Beach to the human ear, a 2.1 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 Oriole Tr do you need to be?
Oriole Tr produces an estimated 59 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
59 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
165 ft
47 dBA
Quiet office
330 ft
40 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 49% of Long Beach sits under tree canopy (heavier than most cities) and roughly 11% 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 Long Beach
The bar chart below shows the share of Long Beach residents in each noise band. About 31% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 7% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Long Beach Compares
Long Beach sits at the louder end of the spectrum. Below: how Long Beach's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Waterford, Mill Creek, Kingsford Heights, and Ogden Dunes.
Average noise level (dBA)
Long Beach's 55.3 dBA pop-weighted average is at the louder end of the spectrum. Indiana as a whole averages 53.8 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Long Beach because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 46.3% of Long Beach 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, 48.2% of Long Beach's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Indiana average of 37.8% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Long Beach
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 Oriole Tr 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 49% of Long Beach is under tree cover (heavier than most 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.
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.
