Noise Levels in Old Town, Beaumont, TX | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
56 dBA
Average noise across Old Town
Quiet office to normal conversation
716
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
59% of Old Town residents
65 dBA
Loudest residential point
Busy restaurant
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Old Town 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 716 Old Town residents, or 59.1%, live above that level. By land area, 64.1% of Old Town is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Old Town residents, grouped by direction from the center of Old Town. Western Old Town carries the highest population-weighted average; Southern Old Town carries the lowest. Just 48% of residents in Southern Old Town live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, about two-thirds of the share in Western Old Town.
Central Old Town
55.1 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
69% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Old Town
55.9 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
71% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Old Town
56.4 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
50% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Old Town
54.8 dBA · Moderate-loud
Quiet office to normal conversation
48% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Old Town
57.5 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
78% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Old Town sounds about 21% louder than Southern Old Town to the human ear, a 2.7 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 I-10 do you need to be?
I-10 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
65 dBA
Busy restaurant
330 ft
58 dBA
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
660 ft
51 dBA
Quiet office
¼ mile
44 dBA
Quiet suburban street at night
½ mile
37 dBA
Soft rainfall
Calculated from the model's calibrated attenuation formula. About 17% of Old Town sits under tree canopy (about average for neighborhoods) and roughly 40% 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 Old Town. 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 Old Town
The bar chart below shows the share of Old Town residents in each noise band. About 42% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 11% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Old Town Compares
Old Town sits at the louder end of the spectrum. Below: how Old Town's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Heart of the City, eugene-field-beaumont-tx, pine-cone-beaumont-tx, and acorn-beaumont-tx.
Average noise level (dBA)
Old Town's 56.0 dBA pop-weighted average is at the louder end of the spectrum. Texas as a whole averages 50.8 dBA and the U.S. averages 52.0 dBA. Both are lower than Old Town because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 59.1% of Old Town 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, 64.1% of Old Town's footprint sits above 55 dBA, against a Texas average of 22.8% and a national average of 28.1%.
What This Means if You're Moving to Old Town
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 I-10 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 17% of Old Town is under tree cover (about average for neighborhoods), 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.
