(The following article by Lynn Sweet was posted on the Chicago Sun-Times website on December 17.)
WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration is expected to announce today a long-awaited decision to allow cities in Illinois to retain their bans on train whistles.
The potential removal of the bans has been a long-running issue in the Chicago area, and every lawmaker whose district has tracks has heard from anti-noise constituents.
An announcement on the sounding of train horns will be made by Federal Railroad Administrator Allen Rutter, who inherited a dispute that has spanned the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Illinois has 899 of the nation’s 1,978 railroad grade-level crossings — 237 of them in Chicago. The crossings are covered by whistle bans that are regulated by the state.
Such bans, however, could be voided by federal rules. That prospect was raised when rules were drafted to comply with a 1994 law requiring the sounding of a whistle when a train approached a grade crossing. In 2000, the railroad administration proposed a rule that could have overturned some Illinois “quiet zones” and required trains to sound their horns at grade crossings.
Leaders in the Illinois congressional delegation — Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Rep. William Lipinski (D-Ill.) — opposed the rule and the federal push to mandate installation of costly safety measures. They have been working for years to fashion a rule that would let Illinois keep its quiet zones.
Through the years, a pilot program channeled federal money to the Illinois Commerce Commission to help make crossings safer in Des Plaines, Naperville, North Chicago and the central Illinois city of Decatur.
Last month, Durbin said the railroad administration will send another $500,000 to expand the program in those cities.