Amarillo, TX Noise Levels
Is Amarillo, TX noisy?
Amarillo, TX's 70-79.9 dB(A) band spans one of HUD's zone boundaries, so the honest answer is a range: somewhere between "Normally Unacceptable" (65-75 dB(A)) and "Unacceptable" (above 75 dB(A)), not one clean verdict. Rail traffic drives that number here, not the other two sources. That figure is sampled at one coordinate, the Census Bureau's own internal point for Amarillo, not a street-by-street survey of the whole place.
Amarillo's noise, by source
Each of the three transportation modes gets its own model from BTS; the combined figure above is what they add up to.
What this means for a house here
That also clears FHWA's own 66 dB(A) impact threshold for residential land use (23 CFR 772, Table 1), the level highway agencies use to decide whether a new road needs a sound wall. The same window and door upgrades that work on road noise also cut broadband rail noise, though very low-frequency freight rumble travels through walls, not just glass.
Where Amarillo ranks
Among the 3,622 US places in this dataset with any measurable transportation noise, Amarillo ranks 16, loudest first. By population, it ranks 124 of the 12,137 places in this dataset, home to about 203,729 people.
Your street may differ from Amarillo's reading
This page describes Amarillo as a whole. If one specific address is what matters, BTS publishes the same underlying map for free.
Behind Amarillo's reading
The methodology guide shows exactly how Amarillo's reading was built from BTS's tile data. Since rail traffic is what's driving this reading, the guide to what actually cuts each kind of noise covers the fix that fits.