(The following story by Doug Oakley appeared on the Contra Costa Times website on July 21. Michael Poirier is Secretary-Treasurer of BLET Division 144 in Oakland, Calif.)
BERKELEY, Calif. — Those train whistle blasts that shatter Berkeley’s nighttime silence may snap some people out of their dreams, but they also save lives.
That is why trains are required to blow their whistles at crossings, and that is why engineers will continue laying on their horns unless Berkeley establishes “quiet zones” at crossings, an Amtrak engineer said Friday.
“The reason we are adamant about blowing our horns is that people don’t always follow the laws,” said Michael Poirier, an Amtrak engineer and secretary-treasurer for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers in Oakland and Sacramento. “There are people who will run around the gates when they are down right in front of a train. That’s why we blow the horns.”
In response to numerous complaints from people who live near railroad tracks, the Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to conduct the studies that the federal government requires of cities that want to establish quiet zones around crossings in lieu of whistle blasts.
Different methods can be used to create quiet zones, such as extending crossing arms so cars can’t zig-zag through or placing flexible barriers in the middle of traffic lanes leading to a crossing.
New rules passed last year allow such zones. Where those zones don’t exist, the rules mandate that trains going faster than 15 mph sound their horns with four blasts for at least 15 seconds but no longer than 25 seconds.
Those rules and continued growth of the Port of Oakland, where trains bring goods to and from ships, have contributed to an increase in noise complaints, said Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration.
“With quiet zones, the hope is the amount, duration and intensity of noise will be diminished,” Flatau said. “As the new horn rules took effect, we got complaints that loudness increased.”
Flatau said that until last year, train engineers were subject to state and company rules that were less stringent about blowing whistles than the new federal rules.
He said 275 quiet zones already have been established across the country, including six in Northern California.
Amtrak engineer Poirier said he is not against quiet zones, as long as they are safe.
Unfortunately, accidents happen, and most engineers are “very likely” to hit a car or person during their career, he said.
“There are some guys who have never hit anyone, but most everyone has hit someone at least once, and it’s very hard on the engineer because he has no ability to stop a train quickly,” Poirier said. “I was once going 79 miles per hour through Oakland, and a cement truck went around the gates right in front of me, and I probably missed him by about 25 feet.”
Poirier said he is monitored randomly at railroad crossings to see whether he blows his horn. His job is on the line if he does not.
“They regulate everything we do, so we’re going to keep blowing our horns,” Poirier said.
Carol Denney, a west Berkeley resident, knows how dangerous trains are. Her grandfather lost both legs running across a track in Pennsylvania in 1910.
“He was hit by a train when he was 8 years old, so the safety issue had a special resonance in our family,” Denney said. “The language of a train whistle is about safety and about keeping the community safe. When they try these experiments in quieting trains, they have more accidents.”
When Florida passed a law in the 1980s forbidding trains from sounding their whistles at night on the Florida East Coast Railroad, the rate of collisions increased by 195 percent, Flatau said.
Denney said creating quiet zones in Berkeley is the “last thing they should be doing, messing around with the safety of the community.
“I don’t believe people’s sleep is more important than public safety,” Denney said.
Flatau said a “motivated community” could complete the required studies on quiet zones in about two months.
He said a quiet zone could cost a little more than $100,000 for each crossing if it already has crossing arms.
Berkeley City Council member Linda Maio, who proposed doing the studies, said she thinks four crossings in Berkeley could use quiet zones.