3 ms·

What is louder: 1 subway train, or 200 cars?

• KptMarchewa 4y ago
  More like 500-800 cars, given that one car carries 1.3 people on average.
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  It's a different kind of sound. Tire noise is white noise (or at least, similar). My experience working in close proximity to a light rail line was 1) the train shakes the ground as it goes by, and 2) if you're near a corner, the squeaking is pretty loud. We have water sprayers in those areas to try and cut down on the howling, but it's not a panacea.
  • foepys 4y ago
    That's just bad design. There very quiet tram and railway designs available - they just cost a bit more money than the cheap 19th century designs that are still in place. Where I live in Germany the passenger trains (not even the tracks) got upgraded a few years ago and all those click-clack and screeching sounds are gone. What is left is a wooshing sound of the wind being pushed aside and the not-so-loud grinding sound of the thingy (collector?) that hits the power cable.
• NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  1 subway train. In real tests done in NYC, the mean dbA for subway platforms was 81.1 vs. 76.0 for buses (which, by definition, run on the roads) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707461/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707461/
  • paradox460 4y ago
    And Bart makes the NYC subway sound quiet