In Spring 2025, the Noise Project announced deployment of the first in a series of residential sound monitors, designed to ascertain both baseline noise levels and daily / weekly / seasonal noise trends around Providence. In Fall 2025 we added a second monitor on the opposite side of the city, with more to come in 2026.
The graph below shows the minute-to-minute average of sound-level data collected by all monitors in Providence.1 The purple horizontal line is the city’s residential sound limit, which is 65 decibels (dB) from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and 55 dB from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.
Average Residential Sound Levels (in decibels)2
You can use your cursor to view specific decibel (dB) levels and scroll back 24 hours, or click on the date display to view a different day. You can also click on the colored A, C, and Z “weighting” icons to see how they compare. For more info on weightings, see footnote 2.
The goal of the Noise Project’s city-wide sound-monitor network is to: 1) identify areas where residents face the most persistent exposure to unhealthy noise — and thus where the city should focus its abatement efforts, and 2) determine how effective those efforts actually are. In the relatively short time the monitors have been operating, they have consistently registered:
- Median night-time noise levels well above Providence’s residential limits — and punctuated by recurrent, sleep-disrupting late-night peaks (see below).
- A significant daily rise in noise levels prior to 7:00 a.m., in flagrant disregard of the city’s sound ordinance — This threshold shift generally begins at 5:00 a.m. or even earlier, and is almost entirely generated by deliberately loud vehicles.3
- Recurrent hourly peaks between 70 and 80 decibels (and regularly exceeding 90 dB) — more than twice as loud as legal sound limits4 — both day and night. This ‘impulsive’ (sudden) ambient noise is associated with adverse health effects, including cardiac disease.
All three findings are consistent with similar research in Boston nearly 10 years ago, indicating that Providence noise levels are comparable to those of a major U.S. city multiple times its size and population.5
Daily sound data document that, at the beginning of Mayor Brett Smiley’s fourth year in office — and despite his declared intent to reduce excessive noise in the city — the volume levels from chronic noise sources such as vehicles, house parties, and commercial establishments remain significantly higher than allowed by city ordinances, on an ongoing basis.
Mayor Smiley is running for re-election in 2026, and will undoubtedly tout improvements to quality of life (including noise) as key accomplishments of his first term. Yet without knowing what the city’s sound levels actually were when he took office and what they are now, it’s difficult for residents / voters to determine if his noise-reduction policies have actually been effective,6 and he merits a second term.
Smiley will almost certainly claim that Providence is quieter now than before he became mayor, but can he actually prove it — and if so, how? And even if he can somehow show that the city is less noisy, how would residents know that it’s due to his efforts (such as they are), and not something he has no control over?
By eschewing the sound-level measurements he supported as a candidate after he was elected, Smiley may have sought to avoid having to answer for the high noise levels the Noise Project’s monitors have documented, but has also precluded himself from claiming credit for any reductions. He can’t have it both ways.
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1 It’s important to recognize that averaging the minute-to-minute monitor data effectively compresses the volume range the graph depicts, because a peak or valley in one area is offset by less-dynamic levels elsewhere. For more localized sound data that more directly reflects the noise levels that residents actually experience in different areas, visit our East Side and West Side monitor pages.
2 All three data lines on the graph depict the exact same sound data, but two are “weighted” (filtered) to focus on different frequencies of those sounds. The green line is “A-weighted” sound data, which emphasizes the frequencies of the human voice, and filters out much of the low-frequency “bass” that comprises most of the excessive noise Providence residents are exposed to. The orange line is “C-weighted” data, which retains far more lower-range bass. And the blue line is referred to as “Z-weighted” data, but is actually unweighted — i.e., “raw” sound data with no frequency filtering.
Like most U.S. municipalities, Providence bases its noise measurements on A-weighted data that, as the graph above demonstrates, usually depicts noise levels as being significantly lower than either C-weighted or unweighted data, and thus inaccurately represents actual noise levels in the city. For more details on sound weighting — including a visual depiction of the various weightings — and the exponential decibel scale (see footnote 4), visit our “How Sound is Measured” page.
3 Not surprisingly, the observed sources of most of the noise data collected by the sound monitors are motor vehicles with modified mufflers or over-amplified audio systems — the two most-prevalent noise sources in Providence that residents have consistently reported to the Noise Project. Without vehicle noise, the city would be much quieter, especially at night.
4 Contrary to popular misconception, the decibel (dB) scale is not linear — i.e., it does not increase at a constant rate, such that a sound that’s twice as high in dB is therefore twice as loud. Instead, it’s logarithmic (exponential), which means it rises at an increasing rate, so that a 90-dB sound peak is not 60% louder than Providence’s 55-dB night-time limit , but actually more than 100 times the legal maximum, and thus can easily penetrate nearby buildings and wake sleeping residents. What needs to be that loud?
5 This is further corroborated by sound readings collected by Brown University students with hand-held sound-level monitors, as reported in a rare article acknowledging excessive noise levels in Providence by the Boston Globe’s Rhode Island bureau.
6 In response to the Noise Project’s survey of Providence mayoral candidates in 2022, Smiley stated that, “As part of a review of the noise level in our city and improved enforcement, noise should be measured on an ongoing basis in order to produce consistent data.” (Emphasis added.) To be clear, he said PVD should actively collect ambient sound data over time.
On the basis of that and other responses to our survey questions, the Noise Project endorsed both Smiley and then-City Council member Nirva LaFortune in the 2022 election. After being elected, however, Smiley has not measured noise levels, nor announced any intention to do so. Providence voters should keep that in mind in 2026: Do not rely on what the mayor says, but on what he actually does.