(The Associated Press distributed the following article by John Seewer on February 1.)
FOSTORIA, Ohio — Harold Pelton has put up with trains all his life.
Years ago steam engines sprayed cinders and coals onto the roof of his general store, forcing him to climb up and shovel them away. Now whistles blare from as many as 190 trains that converge each day in town.
“Sometimes it blows your drums out,” said Pelton, 80, who sells a little bit of everything — fresh popcorn, steaks and screws — at his store a few steps across the street from the track. “They just lay on the horn all the way through town.”
It’s such a common complaint around the nation that the Federal Railroad Administration plans at the end of the year to let cities ban the whistles as long as they add or improve safety devices at crossings.
Train whistles already are banned in about 2,000 communities in 24 states, mainly in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and Virginia.
The federal agency says train whistles are a nuisance for 9.3 million people nationally, in part because rail traffic has increased and towns are expanding toward once-remote railroad tracks.
“Train whistles are there so the railroads and municipalities don’t get sued,” said Fostoria Mayor John Davoli. “There’s no penalty for being too loud, so the whistles have become louder than they need to be.”
He has been lobbying state and federal lawmakers for about two years for help in creating “quiet zones” in the northwest Ohio city of 14,000 people, where so many tracks converge they look like tangled spaghetti strands.
Piercing whistles are more than an inconvenience.
Neighbors of busy rail crossings say the noise lowers their property values, forces some people to move and increases stress and sleeplessness.
“They stop you from having a conversation on the phone or in the house,” said Charles Ferillo, a resident who is leading efforts to establish a quiet zone in Columbia, S.C. “You can’t sit on the porch or watch kids play in the yard.
“It’s a question of livability, public health and property values,” he said.
The City Council in Columbia is studying the idea.
Ferillo estimated it would cost $2.5 million to upgrade crossings along a 6-mile stretch of track that runs past several neighborhoods and three universities.
It would be worth it, Ferillo said, to quiet whistles that have been measured to be equal to the sound of a jackhammer.
As part of its proposal allowing quiet zones, the Federal Railroad Administration is requiring that cities install safety devices that do more to prevent drivers from trying to cross in front of a train.
“We don’t want to trade safety for quietness,” Ferillo said.
The Federal Railroad Administration said crossings with only conventional gates were likely to have 34 percent more wrecks than those where horns are also blown.
Seven deaths at crossings in 2002 where whistles were banned might have been prevented had the horns been sounded, according to the agency.
The Association of American Railroads, which represents the nation’s major freight railroads, supports improving safety at crossings while also allowing quiet zones.
But it has not fully reviewed the agency’s proposed regulations and may recommend some tweaks to the rules, said Tom White, a spokesman for the Washington-based group.
Nationwide, about half of all public highway crossings have automated warning signals such as lights or gates.
Safety improvements can include constructing longer gates, and barriers that stop cars from zigzagging around crossing gates such as installing permanent pylons with reflectors near the crossings.
“What will prevent death and accidents is keeping people off the tracks ? not whether they will react to louder and louder train whistles,” Ferillo said.
The Federal Railroad Administration also plans to limit how loud whistles can be and require locomotives to blow their horns 15 seconds before a crossing instead of a quarter of a mile from it. That would reduce the amount of time slower moving trains are sounding their whistles.
The proposals, which are to take effect Dec. 18, would set a national standard for train whistles, eliminating various state laws on quiet zones.