Noise Levels in New Britain, PA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
55 dBA
Average noise across New Britain
Quiet office to normal conversation
844
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
32% of New Britain residents
78 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across New Britain 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 844 New Britain residents, or 32.1%, live above that level. By land area, 39.1% of New Britain is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for New Britain residents, grouped by direction from the center of New Britain. Northern New Britain carries the highest population-weighted average; Eastern New Britain carries the lowest. Just 30% of residents in Eastern New Britain live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, about two-thirds of the share in Northern New Britain.
Central New Britain
58.7 dBA · Loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
62% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern New Britain
54.6 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
30% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern New Britain
59.0 dBA · Loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
56% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western New Britain
54.7 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
28% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern New Britain sounds about 36% louder than Eastern New Britain to the human ear, a 4.4 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 Butler Av do you need to be?
Butler Av produces an estimated 62 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
62 dBA
Busy restaurant
165 ft
48 dBA
Quiet office
330 ft
41 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 33% of New Britain sits under tree canopy (about average for cities) and roughly 30% 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 New Britain. 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
Philadelphia International (PHL) sits south of New Britain. 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 75 dBA on the map's Overall layer. Blocks on the opposite side of New Britain, particularly to the north, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across New Britain
The bar chart below shows the share of New Britain residents in each noise band. About 44% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 8% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How New Britain Compares
New Britain sits at the louder end of the spectrum. Below: how New Britain's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Colmar, Ottsville, Dublin, and Fountainville.
Average noise level (dBA)
New Britain's 55.1 dBA pop-weighted average is at the louder end of the spectrum. Pennsylvania as a whole averages 52.9 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than New Britain because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 32.1% of New Britain 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, 39.1% of New Britain'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 New Britain
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 Butler Av 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 33% of New Britain 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.
Airport noise is directional. Philadelphia International's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the south. Neighborhoods to the north 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.
