Comment & Analysis: The headline Dublins noisiest locations: From a picturesque D4 road to a busy M50 junction runs in todays The Irish Times online, with an opening paragraph Sandymounts Strand Road has been found to be the noisiest place in Dublin city. But is Strand Road noisier than the M50? Or, as some have asked, busy city centre streets?The article is based on a limited set of live monitoring locations by Dublin City Council, Dn Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and South Dublin County Council. The fourth Dublin council, Fingal County Council, does not yet have live monitoring.For traffic noise, its worth looking at where car noise comes from and how engine noise is the main source only up to around 35km/h, as shown in the image below. Its why electric cars wont solve the traffic noise issue, and other research even indicates that the gap between internal combustion engine cars and electric cars narrows at around 15-20km/h.IMAGE: Noise from cars depending on the speed (image links to source). Its worth noting that there are other factors, including different types of asphalt that can also affect the rolling noise level (although low-noise asphalt is reasonably rare in Ireland). We can also see from the above that the noise at 50km/h is significantly louder than 30km/h, while 60km/h is also significantly louder again. While roads and streets, for example, along the Grand Canal are busy, these are usually at very low speeds, with heavy traffic and crossing many major routes slowing things down.The councils noise mapping shows the M50 locations are nearer to houses than to traffic, while along Strand Road the traffic is closer and often at higher. Given its coastal location, there may also be wind interference pushing up the baseline at Strand Road.But Strand Road also has a large number of trucks, and theyll cause more noise at anything but crawling speed, while locations along the canal have fewer trucks.But even without any mention of wind interference, I think the line that Sandymounts Strand Road has been found to be the noisiest place in Dublin city should include or be closely followed by the context that it refers only to live locations data, which is limited, and any mention of the M50 should mention that there are houses closer to it than the monitoring locations.One of the closest live monitoring points to the M50 is at Ballyogan Crescent. You can see the noise monitor on Street View and how its sheltered by houses between it and the motorway:That location on Ballyogan Crescent is the small red X at the top left corner of the map below, showing EPA predictions of where noise is worst. Theres now new housing built that changes the map below, but that new housing and other existing housing are likely far more exposed to noise than the monitoring location at Ballyogan Crescent:South Dublin County Councils sound monitoring station in Tymon Park seems to be 120+ metres from the motorway mostly with thick tree cover from most angles: There are loads of places where housing is closer to the motorway and other busy, higher-speed roads with less cover and no sound barriers of the type you get across Europe. So, while Strand Road is clearly very loud problematically noisy I think care needs to be taken calling it the loudest road or street in Dublin,