Noise Levels in Spring Garden, Philadelphia, PA | Find Quiet Neighborhoods With Our Sound Map
60 dBA
Average noise across Spring Garden
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
7,800
Residents above the EPA 55 dBA threshold
89% of Spring Garden residents
78 dBA
Loudest residential point
City bus interior
This map shows modeled outdoor noise across Spring Garden 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 7,800 Spring Garden residents, or 89.2%, live above that level. By land area, 86.5% of Spring Garden is above 55 dBA.
Average noise levels for Spring Garden residents, grouped by direction from the center of Spring Garden. Southern Spring Garden carries the highest population-weighted average; Eastern Spring Garden carries the lowest. Just 84% of residents in Eastern Spring Garden live in blocks above the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, three-quarters of the share in Southern Spring Garden.
Central Spring Garden
58.4 dBA · Loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
87% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Eastern Spring Garden
57.1 dBA · Moderate-loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
84% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Northern Spring Garden
61.0 dBA · Loud
Normal conversation an arm’s length away
100% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Spring Garden
66.8 dBA · Loud
Highway traffic 50 ft away
100% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Western Spring Garden
62.1 dBA · Loud
Busy restaurant
93% of people above 55 dBA
QuietLoud
Southern Spring Garden sounds about 96% louder than Eastern Spring Garden to the human ear, a 9.7 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 Spring Garden St do you need to be?
Spring Garden St produces an estimated 63 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
63 dBA
Busy restaurant
165 ft
48 dBA
Quiet office
330 ft
39 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 3% of Spring Garden sits under tree canopy (much lighter than most neighborhoods) and roughly 74% 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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Airport Noise
Philadelphia International (PHL) sits southwest of Spring Garden. 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 Spring Garden, particularly to the northeast, show no measurable aviation contribution. Use the Aviation toggle on the map above to isolate the airport's footprint.
How Noise Is Distributed Across Spring Garden
The bar chart below shows the share of Spring Garden residents in each noise band. About 8% of residents live below the EPA's 55 dBA threshold, and roughly 41% live in blocks above 60 dBA. Long-term exposure in that range is linked to elevated stress hormones and cardiovascular risk.
How Spring Garden Compares
Spring Garden sits the lowest among the peer group. Below: how Spring Garden's average outdoor noise and share of residents above the EPA threshold compare with Fairmount, Hartranft, Strawberry Mansion, and Grays Ferry.
Average noise level (dBA)
Spring Garden's 59.5 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 Spring Garden because most of either area is rural land away from major roads.
Share of residents above 55 dBA
About 89.2% of Spring Garden 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, 86.5% of Spring Garden'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 Spring Garden
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 Spring Garden St 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 Spring Garden is under tree cover (much lighter than most neighborhoods), and the dominant land cover is high-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.
Airport noise is directional. Philadelphia International's approach paths concentrate aviation noise to the southwest. Neighborhoods to the northeast 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.
