Boston, MA Noise Levels
Boston, MA: what the federal noise map shows
Boston, MA's 60-69.9 dB(A) band spans one of HUD's zone boundaries, so the honest answer is a range: somewhere between "Acceptable" (65 dB(A) or below) and "Normally Unacceptable" (65-75 dB(A)), not one clean verdict. Aircraft drives that number here, not the other two sources. That figure is sampled at one coordinate, the Census Bureau's own internal point for Boston, not a street-by-street survey of the whole place.
Boston'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
Depending on where in that band the true value sits, it may also clear FHWA's 66 dB(A) residential impact threshold (23 CFR 772, Table 1), the trigger highway agencies use for sound-wall decisions. Aircraft noise is intermittent and lower-frequency, which is why FAA’s Part 150 program funds whole-envelope sound insulation for homes inside an airport’s own mapped noise contour rather than relying on window replacement alone.
Where Boston ranks
Among the 3,622 US places in this dataset with any measurable transportation noise, Boston ranks 77, loudest first. About 673,458 people live there, making it the 27th largest place in this dataset.
Your street may differ from Boston's reading
For a single house or lot in Boston rather than the town-wide figure above, BTS's own map is the same free source, queried directly.
More on how this number was built
For exactly which federal dataset feeds Boston's figure, see the methodology guide. Since aircraft is what's driving this reading, the guide to what actually cuts each kind of noise covers the fix that fits.