(The following article by Jon Davis was posted on the Chicago Daily Herald website on June 23.)
CHICAGO — A new federal rule requires train horns to blare at crossings around the country starting tomorrow, but Chicago-area crossings will remain mostly quiet.
The region gets to keep local “quiet zones” because the Federal Railroad Administration concedes statistics show rail crossings are safer here, where horns are not blown, than elsewhere around the country where they are sounded.
And administration officials agreed to let existing quiet zones remain in place while that anomaly is studied further with newer information about individual crossings and their safety ratings.
“Our goal of course is to see the current quiet crossings are permanently exempted from the rule,” said Larry Bury, an analyst with the Northwest Municipal Conference, which helped lead local opposition to the train horn rule.
Bury also credited the railroad administration for allowing suburbs to alter the traffic engineering at problematic crossings — like Mount Prospect did after a fatal July 2000 collision — as one way to keep their quiet zones.
Steve Kulm, spokesman for the railroad administration, said no timeline is set for that further analysis.
The train horn rule’s final version was announced April 22. The rule was mandated by the Swift Rail Development Act of 1994 and grew out of safety concerns after collisions along rail lines in Florida.
It requires all trains approaching grade crossings to sound their horns as they approach and enter the crossings.
Horns can be silenced within a “quiet zone” — a stretch of track designated by suburbs — at crossings where safety measures have been put in place.
As federal railroad officials began discussing the rule in 1999 and 2000, suburban officials balked at its one-size-fits-all aspect, arguing 24 hours’ worth of train horns would blast their residents’ eardrums, especially in new downtown developments purposely built within walking distance of Metra stations.
Moreover, they presented statistics showing that Chicago-area drivers are so used to trains that they know to look out for them even though trains don’t blow their horns, making the rule unnecessary.