(The Cleveland Plain Dealer published the following story by Michael O’Malley on its website on July 14.)
BEREA, Ohio — For more than 100 years, locomotive engineers have bounded through the heart of this quiet college town blasting whistles and horns and stopping traffic on two major arteries — Front Street on the north end of town and Bagley Road on the west end.
But a $48 million bridge-and-tunnel project now under way promises some relief by early next year. And by 2005, train horns and flashing railroad gates will become Berea history.
“We can’t wait,” said Norma Hupp of Abbyshire Drive, which is near the Bagley Road railroad project. “I don’t think anyone around here will miss them.”
Construction workers by the end of the summer will begin lowering Bagley Road under a new railroad overpass, so trains will no longer have to blow their warning horns to motorists. The work, begun in September, is expected to be completed by January.
The Front Street project, scheduled to begin in September, was supposed to be similar to the Bagley Road underpass, but money shortages have turned it into a less costly bridge over the tracks.
Tunneling under railroads is more expensive and time-consuming than building a bridge over the trains, said Mayor Joe Biddlecombe. A Front Street tunnel would cost more than twice as much as the $19 million Bagley Road tunnel because there are two railroad crossings – more than 600 feet apart – to dig under.
The federal government has allocated $48 million for both projects, leaving $29 million for the bridge, which will span about an eighth of a mile, Biddlecombe said.
Building the bridge also shaves a year off construction time. A tunnel, Biddlecombe said, would take 21⁄2 years to build; the bridge a year and a half.
That means noise relief much sooner for Judy Butler of nearby Pearl Street.
“All day and all night, blow, blow, blow,” said Butler, 61, who was raised in the north-side neighborhood. “It’s so nerve-wracking.”
Her mother, Reba Butler, 84, said that even without the horns, the powerful diesel engines are loud. “Sometimes you don’t know whether it’s a tornado or a train coming through,” she said.
Train traffic through Berea greatly increased in 1999 when Norfolk Southern and CSX bought Conrail, becoming the two major lines in the eastern United States. They come together near the Front Street crossings, where up to 150 freight trains rumble through in a 24-hour period.
Silencing that daily cacophony of horns will bring relief to many Bereans, but not without a sour note. It may bring more automobile traffic from other cities.
Rush-hour motorists in Cuyahoga County’s southwest suburbs generally avoid Front Street because of the trains, but that could change when the bridge is completed. And some fear the city will become a rush-hour cut-through for downtown commuters seeking shorter routes to freeways.
“I’d rather put up with the trains than cars lined up bumper to bumper heading for Medina,” longtime Berean Jim Jaworski said. “People want to work in Cleveland, but they don’t want to live there.
“They’ll be lined up all the way to the I-X Center [about a mile north of the Front Street tracks]. We’re using local streets for interstate highways.”