(The following article by Sally Heaney was posted on the Boston Globe website on December 19.)
BOSTON — Out West on the prairie, when a train horn blows a warning to motorists, no one’s peace is disturbed. Here, the situation is different, say residents of old village centers where houses are clustered together and train tracks run close by backyards.
Here, a train whistle pierces through the walls of homes, interrupting phone conversations, drowning out television programs, and waking babies, say people who live near the tracks.
”It shakes your insides,” said Lisa Flavin, whose house in West Concord is about 20 feet from the tracks. ”The word ‘whistle’ is such a misnomer. It conjures up a pleasant sound. This is an air-horn sound, something that shoots right through you.”
In January 2003, Concord obtained a train whistle ban from the state Legislature that prohibited train engineers from sounding whistles within the town’s borders except in an emergency. Then, new federal legislation was enacted that will override all local whistle bans. The new rules will require train horns to be blown at all railroad crossings in the United States, except in those communities where officials are granted exemptions.
The new law was originally to have gone into effect yesterday, but has been delayed until April 1. The Town of Concord has filed paperwork requesting that it be allowed to keep the peace after the new rules go into effect, as has Acton, which has had a state-authorized whistle ban since 1994.
In Ayer, selectmen have authorized that an application be submitted to maintain a whistle ban at the Snake Hill Road crossing, and a committee is looking into requesting whistle bans for other crossings, according to Paul Bresnahan, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.
The issue of train whistle bans made news in October when a 14-year-old boy was killed at a crossing in Beverly where the blowing of train whistles had been banned. The boy rode his bike around a closed gate. Officials at the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy immediately required that whistles again be blown at that particular crossing, and an investigation by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is continuing.
Tim Shevlin, spokesman for the Department of Telecommunications and Energy, said the department’s action was focused only on the Beverly crossing and had no impact on whistle bans in other communities nor on local attempts to keep the whistles from blowing next April.
Towns with existing whistle bans that don’t want the whistles to start blowing next April, but have not filed paperwork, have until April 1 to do so, according to Warren Flatau, a Federal Railroad Administration spokesman.
”We expect that all those legacy whistle ban communities will want to continue the quiet to which they have become accustomed,” he said. He stressed that federal and state officials will work with towns to help them maintain their whistle bans after April 1.
He was unable to provide a list of towns that have already submitted exemption requests, saying that the agency’s primary focus at the moment is preparing the final draft of the new rules, which is due out the middle of the next month. These new rules will spell out the safety criteria that a community’s railroad crossings must meet for its quiet-zone request to be granted, Flatau said.
The interim draft of the rules mentioned improvements that might be required, such as four-quadrant crossing gates, which come from both sides of the road in both directions of travel. These gates prevent drivers from crossing the centerline, driving on the wrong side of the road, and weaving around a lowered gate arm.
The interim draft said that, in lieu of four-quadrant gates, other measures, such as median barriers, bells, whistles, warning signs, and public education programs can help a community obtain quiet-zone status, depending on its safety record.
Towns like Acton, which have had whistle bans in effect since before October 1996, will have years to make the required improvements. But at some crossings in Concord the bans were enacted after October 1996. In these locations, the whistles will blow after April 1 unless and until the improvements are made, according to Steven Kulm of the Federal Railroad Administration.
In Concord, resident Mark Garvey, who lives near the tracks, has been a driving force first in obtaining the town’s state whistle ban and now in seeking federal quiet-zone status. He said the town has proposed just lengthening its existing gate arms rather than buying special gates and is also considering hiring a consultant.
A couple of months ago, Garvey went to an informational meeting on Operation Lifesaver, a national train-safety education program. He has decided to become a certified instructor and give safety-awareness presentations at schools and senior centers.
Garvey said that his motivation for becoming an instructor is to help the town’s quiet-zone application get approved. He isn’t trying to compensate for any safety reduction caused by turning off the horns, because he doesn’t think there is one. ”I don’t think the horns lead to safety,” he said. ”I don’t think they are necessary.”
In Acton, Margaret Miley, coordinator of the citizens group Acton Safe and Peaceful, agrees. ”We care about safety, but there are much better ways of ensuring safety than blowing horns all the time,” she said. She said having trains routinely blow horns when approaching crossings makes as much sense as having cars blow horns when approaching highway intersections.
Acton Town Manager Don Johnson said that blowing horns or requiring the four-quadrant gates or median barriers to keep drivers from trying to beat a train across the tracks might make sense in other parts of the country. Out West, there are long, slow-moving freight trains that can hold up traffic for half an hour, but here, there are usually just brief delays for a short commuter train. ”We really don’t have people trying to beat the train,” he said.