Holy crap, I just moved here and the noise from the street is killing me. I thought coming from Los Angeles of all places, i could deal with the noise of traffic, but for some reason, cars here sound so much louder on streets in Zurich than in LA!

My place is two houses from Langstrasse in Kreis 5, but i could hear every single car pass by! My guess is that because streets are only two lanes, the noise is very discrete, i.e. one car at a time, and it really bugs the crap out of me.

Should I just move out as soon as I can, or is this relatively normal in Zurich? I miss sleeping past 7:00a!

Holy crap, when streets are wet traffic noise is greater, which is something LA doesn't suffer from too regularly.

Yea, but it sounds way more pleasant when the streets are wet than when they are dry (as they were a couple days ago).

It is absolutely normal in Zurich and won't get better. If you live in an old house, it could be that your windows aren't sound proof, so moving to a more modern place could be a solution.

Or you wait a nother month and maybe you get used to it. I can't imagine a better place to live in Zurich than Chreis Cheib, so I wouldn't move out in a pink fit...

As mentioned, your place sounds like it has poor soundproofing. You could either move to a place with better soundproofing, or stick it out for a few weeks to see whether you get used to it. Personally I think that if you wait a few weeks, you'll get used to it.

You'll get used to it. The worst is the 2 cycle mopeds and scooters. I don't know what the neighborhood was like in LA, but here in city centers you have lots of concrete and the streets are close to the buildings compared to the average U.S. city, which does make it worse.

You'll get used to it. But just wait until summer when you have to keep your windows open. Then sound proofing will be irrelevant.

But on the bright side... Switzerland has a bedtime. 10:00pm, sharp. Be glad you don't live in Spain.

As others have suggested, wait a few weeks and see if you get used to it. If it doesn't get better, I would start looking for another place in that area. IMHO it's a great area and there are plenty of relatively quiet residential streets just off Langstrasse. Just make sure it's not too close to Langstrasse, Limmatstrasse or the railway tracks.

Well you won't notice much of 10pm bedtime on Langstrasse... in that regard it's probably more like Spain than like Switzerland.

You'll never get used to it, and it'll eat away at your soul.
By the time summer comes and you can't have your windows open peacefully you'll have reached breaking point, mark my words.

Of course, I could be wrong, but having lived on a main road in the UK, and under the flight path here, I have to say noise can easily blight your life.

One option, ear plugs. Won't help in the mornings as they fall out over night, but at least it'll get you off to kip at night.

So, how many messages has the OP received from people asking him to let them know if he moves out?

Jokes aside, Langstrasse is noisy in some parts and it gets worse with improving weather, I have a friend who used to live there and when I looked after her cats and apartment, I was shocked by the amount of noise people think it's fine to make at four am on a weekday. To be fair, on Langstrasse itself it's actually not too bad in the mornings as traffic is slow, but late at night there's the boombox-assisted autocorso.

It's funny, I was bothered by the tram and car noise at my old flat but don't mind the planes overhead. I guess different frequencies bother different people.

why would you even want to live close to Langstrasse

Basically, you have to see that while the total traffic in Los Angeles may be high up on the scale, the traffic per square kilometer is relatively low. If you compare US cities, you will see that traffic in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco "sounds" louder than in Los Angeles. In narrower places, traffic produces lots of ECHOS. In addition to this, the permanent stop-and-go of traffic in narrow cities (most in Central Europe) contributes to the noise. I grew up in a place where, in the first place for some 15 years, we during the night very well heard the two Gotthard trains per hour (freight trains) very well, and in the second place in the same house, for 25 years heard the first bus enroute outside at 5.30 and the trams from nearby at 6.10AM, but I in reality no longer heard them. I on holidays preferred downtown-locations or locations on the Lungomare/Corniche, as I in outside locations could not sleep well. I between 2002 and 2009 lived in a flat which was absolutely silent and was happy when I could leave and get into a place with lively street traffic plus airplanes landing and starting overhead !

This IS Switzerland ! Where traffic goes on deep into the night. It is that way in most really urban places.

Move out now (and away from Langstrasse).

You don't need clever scientific answers to tell you that...

In the beginning I lived on a main road with 3 different trams going by. The noise drove me crazy and I was always awake far too early. I moved just up the main street, but 3 small streets away and the change is magnificent. I sleep with the window cracked most nights now and it's utterly quiet and delightful.

You'll have to give up the energy and fun of Langstrasse, but you'll reap other benefits instead. (I'm in Kreis 7.)

Sound advice (did you see what I did there?)

You are little better than what we had. The first place we lived for a month(Seefeldstr in Zurich ye~~ Seefeldstr generally is a nice area but the place we chose, had a tram stop right next to it. And a women 2 more up, she was really making strange scream at night. I was soooo happy when we moved out of that place.

Thanks for the information you all. I can't really tell if the people telling me to move away from Langstrasse are serious (even though I'm in across the tracks in Kreis 5).

I guess it's better to experience it for myself and then make a judgement. As I've been reading, it seems as though apartment situation is very fluid anyhow. So i'll stick around and hope i like it.

Yes we're serious. But you'll have to accept that many other neighborhoods wont be so energetic and lively (IMHO).

I spent my first year in Switzerland just off Langstrasse (Brauerstrasse). The apartment situation was so tight then it was the only place my company's HR people could find for me.

The noise also drove me crazy, I lasted a year.

Now I have the opposite. Where I live now is quiet as the grave.