In my case, the street car noise was roughly comparable to a garbage truck, but ...

In my case, the street car noise was roughly comparable to a garbage truck, but much more frequent. Significantly louder than a diesel bus though, and not as flexible. Better than diesel buses are trolley-buses; electric buses that use overhead power lines like the trolley, but with rubber road tires instead of train rails. Those are really quite, but aren't as flexible with rerouting as diesel buses. But between the trolley-buses and diesel buses, I think streetcars don't have much of a niche. I just don't see why a city today would opt to install streetcars if they could use trolley-buses instead.

Motorcycles are definitely the worst offenders though. Not all motorcycles are loud, but the loud ones are really loud.