(The following story by Scott Wong appeared on The Argus website on September 30.)
FREMONT, Calif. — Hotel owner Kamlesh Patel says hardly any of the guests who stay at his Holiday Inn Express in Warm Springs ever come back.
Since Union Pacific Railroad began using remote controls — rather than more costly engineers — to guide freight trains out of the nearby NUMMI plant and through the Warren Avenue crossing, noise from train warning horns has doubled, he says.
“Every morning, we get complaints from the guests who say they would not like to come back because of the train noise,” said Patel, who has owned the 114-room Kato Road hotel for four years. “We don’t see many repeat guests.”
Patel, 32, was one of several residents and business owners who sounded off to the City Council about how deafening blasts from train warning horns at road crossings — from Niles to Centerville to Warm Springs — interrupt their phone conversations during the day and derail their sleep at night.
In response to a number of citizen complaints the city has received since March, the council decided Tuesday night to allocate $20,000 to study the costs of establishing “quiet zones” at two of its 16 rail crossings: at Warren Avenue and at Nursery Avenue, off Mission Boulevard in Niles.
In quiet zones, train engineers would not be required to blow their horns when passing through public grade crossings — as federal and state laws dictate — as long as there are special gate systems, raised medians and other additional safety measures in place.
But the zones may be hung up by the Federal Railroad Administration, which in January is expected to release new rules on how Fremont and other cities can establish the half-mile zones, Assistant City Engineer Jim Pierson said.
Until then, city officials’ hands are tied, Councilmember Bill Pease said.
He and others on the council urged citizens to begin collecting data about the horn noise and lodging complaints with rail companies — such as Union Pacific, Altamont Commuter Express and Capitol Corridor — to speed along the process.
“The first questions they’ll ask is: ‘What day? How long? and When?'” Pease said. “Unfortunately, the situation is you need to help us help you.”
Dan Wilkowsky already has a head start. The Warm Springs resident said he was abruptly awakened by excessive train horns at 2:13 a.m., 2:30 a.m. and again at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday.
“The last two years (that Union Pacific has utilized remote control) have been an absolute nightmare,” he said. “It’s like being at a Who concert 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
But Paul Siegmund, Union Pacific train operations manager in Milpitas, said he doesn’t understand how operating trains by remote control would create more noise than engineers.
“I don’t know where that contention comes from,” he said. “There’s not any more traffic over there than there has been in the past.”
Siegmund has received complaints from only one citizen about increased train noise, he said, adding that the railroad company is working to ensure its employees are staying within the law without “overprescribing the horn.”
“We are trying to ensure that once they pass the crossings, they stop blowing the horn, that they do not excessively blow them beyond the crossings,” the San Jose resident said.