(The following article by Jon Hilkevitch was posted on the Chicago Tribune website on September 14.)
CHICAGO — The irritating blast of train horns has been silenced along a stretch of track on Chicago’s Southwest Side and nearby suburbs, establishing the first quiet zone in Illinois that meets new federal safety requirements, officials said Monday.
Improved railroad-crossing barriers and raised median curbs to prevent vehicles from snaking around lowered gates also have been installed at CSX Transportation crossings from 123rd to 99th Streets.
The majority of the $3 million in safety upgrades–in Chicago, Blue Island and Evergreen Park– became operational over the weekend and the work will be completed soon extending north to 87th Street, officials said.
Cheers from residents living near the CSX tracks have replaced the blaring horns of more than 30 freight trains daily. Families are sleeping with their windows open for the first time in years and will no longer have to pause back-yard conversations until trains have passed.
“People are saying, `Listen to that. It’s the sound of our property values going up,'” said Marianne Rowan Leslie, whose home at 106th Street and Maplewood Avenue sits between two busy rail crossings.
“The difference in our quality of life in just one weekend has been a real joy,” said Rowan Leslie, 43, president of the West Beverly Civic Association.
Neighborhood groups credited State Rep. Kevin Joyce (D-Chicago) for pressing the state to install four-quadrant gates–replacing the customary two gates–or raised medians at 13 crossings to avert the whistle requirement in the densely populated 4-mile-long area through which locomotive engineers until now sounded their horns continuously.
A rule that the Federal Railroad Administration has been working on since 1994 and plans to enact on Dec. 18 gives municipalities the authority to create whistle bans if certain devices are put in place.
In addition, the regulation would reinstate the sounding of train horns where they are now banned at hundreds of “quiet zone” crossings in 50 northern Illinois communities after a waiver period if improvements are not made. Local governments will have at least five years to install the required enhancements to ensure safety, officials said. Local governments going through the time-consuming process of applying for state funding will be given up to eight years to complete the installations.
More than 90 of the 114 grade crossings in Chicago that are now governed by quiet zones do not meet the new federal law taking effect in December, said Brian Steele, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Transportation. He said the required improvements would be made over the next four years to keep the whistle bans in place.
Vehicle-detection devices are being installed at the upgraded whistle-ban crossings to prevent cars and trucks from getting trapped on the tracks when the four-quadrant gates are lowered for approaching trains, said John Blair, a senior railroad safety specialist at the Illinois Commerce Commission, which is overseeing the project. The vehicle-detection devices sense the presence of a vehicle and delay or reverse the lowering of the exit gates so that the vehicle can safely get off the tracks, Blair said.
“The four-quadrant gates take the decision out of the motorists’ hands to try to drive around the gates to beat a train,” Blair said. “It’s safer than having only two gates and requiring trains to blow their horns.”
Engineers will still sound horns in quiet zones in the event a child is seen on or near the tracks or another hazard exists, said Tom Livingston, vice president of government affairs at CSX Transportation.
Jamie Manahan, a Chicago mother of four children ages 8 to 11, said she and her husband will have to “retrain the kids” to make them more aware of their surroundings in a whistle-free environment. But it will be worth the peace.
“I had four babies right in a row who cried and cried because the trains sounded like they were coming right through the house,” said Manahan, 41, who lives between the 111th and 113th Street crossings. “Now, the quiet is surreal.”