(The Associated Press circulated the following article on October 19.)
BOSTON — State Transportation Secretary Daniel Grabauskas said he will meet with safety regulators this week to discuss lifting train whistle bans at some rail crossings throughout the MBTA system in the wake of the death last week of a teenager at a Beverly crossing.
Eighth-grader David Siljeholm of Manchester-by-the-Sea was struck by a commuter train on the morning of Oct. 12 at the crossing near the Beverly Farms station after he rode his bicycle around the closed crossing gate. The boy’s mother and sister were riding their bikes a short distance behind him, and were not injured.
Officials said that when they could find no documents authorizing the local quiet zone, which bans the sounding of train whistles or horns, trains were ordered to begin blowing their whistles at the West Street crossing, where the youth was killed.
Tim Shevlin, executive director of the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy, said communities apply when they want to ban train whistles at road crossings. The bans are issued either by an order from the department, or through an act of the state Legislature.
There are 80 undocumented train whistle bans throughout the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority system.
Grabauskas said he will ask DTE, which oversees transportation safety, to analyze the undocumented bans on a case-by-case basis.
Grabauskas, chairman of the MBTA’s board, declined to say if he favors lifting the whistle bans, but told The Boston Globe on Monday, “Every study ever conducted over time, and maybe even time immemorial, shows that train whistles save lives. There’s no question about it.”
At stake in the whistle debate is the delicate balance between suburban quiet and public safety.
At crossings where there is no ban, locomotive engineers are required to sound a train’s whistle or horn 15 to 20 seconds before arriving, and no more than a quarter of a mile away.
State Rep. Mary E. Grant, D-Beverly, said she wants more information from state officials about the lifting of the whistle ban were Siljeholm was killed.
Mayor William J. Scanlon Jr. said lifting the whistle ban would result in an average of two horns blowing every minute of every day in Beverly, which has 17 crossings, the most of any community in the state. He said the whistles would become so commonplace that motorists and pedestrians would ignore them.
The Federal Railroad Administration has been reviewing local whistle bans nationwide because laws governing the use of whistles at road intersection will switch from state to federal control in January.