(The News & Observer published the following story by Vicki Hyman on its website on September 1.)
RALEIGH, N.C. — You may never set foot on the Triangle Transit Authority’s commuter trains, but if you live, work or drive near the 35-mile rail line that will sweep through the heart of the Triangle, you will feel its effect.
You will see it. You will hear it. And you will wait for it.
Rail advocates tout the prospect of hassle-free commutes and redevelopment and higher property values around the 16 planned stations. But neighbors might also notice more crowded streets and cut-through traffic. Trains will whiz past homes, crossing gates will block roads, and horns may echo frequently as rail cars pass.
Starting this month, the TTA will hold a series of meetings to brief people who live within 500 feet of the rail corridor and around the stations. Neighbors will have a say in station design, and they’ll learn what to expect when the trains start running through downtown Raleigh, Cary, Research Triangle Park and Durham in December 2007.
“I’m sure there are still plenty of people out there who aren’t aware this is coming,” said Sandy Ogburn, the TTA’s community relations manager. “We are going to have an impact on what people have come to believe is their back yards.”
To head off serious traffic and noise problems, the TTA plans to spend millions of dollars on noise walls, new turn lanes at intersections near rail crossings and stations, and coordinated traffic signals. But some added noise and traffic are unavoidable.
The TTA is laying tracks alongside a busy freight and Amtrak corridor that has been in operation more than 150 years. But busy for freight and passenger trains — about 18 per day between Raleigh and Cary — is not that busy compared with commuter trains. At peak times, the TTA’s two-car trains will run four times an hour. Street crossings will close on average every 7 1/2 minutes for nearly a minute at a time.
Now, freight trains flash through the trees behind Mary E. Cross’ home on Madison Avenue in Cary every few hours. When the leaves drop off in the fall and winter, she has a ringside seat.
“I’ve learned to ignore them,” she said. “But if it’s going to be every 15 minutes and it gets noisy, and there are transients in my back yard, that’s not OK.”
Some people will encounter trains only at crossings, where they wait for the rail cars to pass. The TTA trains will cross local roads in 42 places, almost all existing crossings used by freight trains.
The agency will build three bridges to separate trains from vehicle traffic, at Morrisville Parkway, New Hope Church Road and Millbrook Road. Four private crossings will close, and perhaps a few public crossings as well.
To stop drivers from darting across the tracks when a train is approaching, the remaining crossings will probably get the full safety treatment: two sets of barrier arms, one on each side of the crossing, or barricades in the center of the road, or both.
But TTA officials warn that traffic snarls might be inevitable at some intersections. Of the 25 intersections adjacent to the crossings, 14 will become more congested because of the commuter trains. The TTA is adding turn lanes to half those intersections.
The TTA plans to synchronize the train crossing signals with the nearby traffic signals. When the gates are down, red lights will keep traffic from moving toward the crossing.
The worst snarls are likely to occur around N.C. 54 in Morrisville, with its intersection of Morrisville-Carpenter Road and Aviation Parkway. The freight crossing is about 100 feet away. Trains already create long backups as they cross Morrisville-Carpenter Road, and now the TTA is throwing commuter trains into the mix.
Jane Creech has lived near N.C. 54 for 40 years, and she has seen the old country road turn into a busy commuter thoroughfare. She doesn’t venture onto N.C. 54 during rush hour. “We pick our times to get out and go, but people who have to go to work, I feel sorry for them,” she said.
The TTA plans to add right-turn lanes in two directions at the intersection. In the worst-case scenario, a commuter train passing during rush hour could create a queue of 33 cars. But no one expects the turn lanes to solve the problem. Backups also could leak into nearby intersections, tangling traffic in all directions.
A few other intersections are expected to be badly congested by 2007, even without commuter rail. That’s because the roads that feed those intersections need to be widened for significant stretches, work the TTA considers outside its scope. The state plans to widen Aviation Parkway, but the work is at least seven years away.
The TTA also wants to quiet noise from its commuter trains by having them blow their horns only in emergencies.
Under current railroad rules, engineers start sounding the horn about a quarter-mile from a crossing. But the TTA reasons that its extra safety measures at the crossings will suffice. The TTA is awaiting a decision by the Federal Railroad Administration on whether such “quiet zones” are safe.
If the federal agency vetoes the idea, then the TTA plans to install horns at the train crossings, so the noise will come from them rather than the trains. That will direct the sound down the road, instead of along the rail corridor.
A TTA analysis of 43 locations along the corridor shows that even with the crossing-mounted horns, train noise will affect 28 of them. Some nearby homeowners will also hear wheel squeal.
The TTA plans to spend at least $4.1 million on noise walls to protect more than 350 homes and churches from the sound. The concrete walls will range up to 24 feet high and close to a mile long. Neighborhoods will choose from a palette of treatments and plantings to beautify the walls.
Some neighborhoods will endure noise from the trains and increased traffic from the park-and-ride crowd.
In the transit advocate’s dream world, neighborhoods around the rail stations would become so dense with homes, offices and shops that most people would walk or bike to the train. In the real world, many of the stations will cater to commuters who drive there, at least initially.
That means more traffic at most of the stations, with the worst traffic near the West Raleigh station, east of Interstate 40, and the State Fairgrounds station, despite plans to build new turn lanes there.
At least one neighborhood is already concerned about the prospect of cut-through traffic– Boylan Heights, southwest of the downtown Raleigh station. Neighbors there have closely watched the rail plan evolve and played a major role in locating the station, straddling Hargett Street.
Now they worry about drivers speeding along the neighborhood’s hills and curves on the way to the station. That is the kind of issue the agency and residents are likely to address at the community meetings.
“I don’t know what the solution is yet,” said Paul Meyer, president of the Boylan Heights Association. “There may be a lack of consensus. Some people in the neighborhood would say, ‘How do I get to the station quickly?’ I’m hoping this fall we develop some of that.”