I live above freeway 52. The freeway is in the canyon below – and we’re about 1500 feet away. The noise is there in the background.
You do hear it on summer nights when it’s warm and the windows are open. When the windows are closed, you don’t hear it at all.
I think the amount of hard surfaces, vs vegetation, between your home and the freeway, makes a difference… the vegetation absorbs the noise… hard surfaces echo it – making it worse. My part of UC is pretty low density with lots of mature landscape – so that matters.
The sunsets over the canyon and over Mt. Soledad are awesome. To me, that’s well worth the freeway noise. If I had an ocean view – I’d be willing to up the noise level.
I will agree with the comment that tire noise is not the issue – lack of mufflers on motorcycles, ambulance or police sirens, etc… those are disturbing and not background noise. Fortunately, they don’t happen often.
