(The following article by David Patch was posted on the Toledo Blade website on November 14.)
TOLEDO, Ohio — While federal procedures for silencing train horns in densely populated areas took effect in June, local officials are learning that setting up “quiet zones” in their communities is neither fast nor cheap.
To compensate for the lack of an audible warning to motorists, regulations that the Federal Railroad Administration placed in effect in June require municipalities or highway authorities to install “supplemental safety measures,” in addition to typical automated gates and flashing lights, at many crossings.
Plastic paddles that serve as a median barrier to prevent motorists from driving around lowered warning gates, among the least-expensive options, cost as much as $30,000 to $40,000 per intersection, according to Fostoria Mayor John Davoli, whose city hopes to establish “quiet zones” along three rail lines that have a combined 24 street crossings in town.
George Pearson, a senior railroad specialist with Bergman & Associates of Rochester, N.Y., told Mr. Davoli and other area municipal leaders during a local seminar last week that they should expect to foot most of the bill themselves.
“There’s the installation cost, and then there are ongoing additional maintenance costs that will be borne by the local communities,” Mr. Pearson said.
And the process for federal approval is not a rapid one, starting with a four-month notice period between a “quiet zone” applicant’s initial declaration of intent and filing specific plans with the Federal Railroad Administration. After that, several more months are set aside for comments from the public and the railroad company involved.
Mr. Davoli said his city has had no choice but to take a leading role in seeking “quiet zones” – it hopes to submit its application to the FRA by Christmas – because as many as 200 trains pass through Fostoria daily, accounting for more than 5,000 whistle blasts combined.
Fostoria hopes to establish quiet zones as inexpensively as possible, Mr. Davoli said, by commissioning a statistical analysis of its grade crossings that the Federal Railroad Administration will review to determine if “supplemental safety measures” can be waived for at least some of them.
But the potential cost is giving officials in other cities pause. In Perrysburg, where an estimated 13 to 17 trains per day cross a dozen street crossings over slightly more than a mile, city administrator John Alexander recommended in July that no “quiet zone” application be filed because of the potential cost to upgrade six of them that lack automatic warning gates – about $140,000 apiece.
Since then, city officials have held a hearing at which citizens pleaded for horn relief, and Mr. Alexander said the issue could be revisited next year.
The price of quiet is an analysis a lot of communities are going to have to make, Mr. Pearson said. In Rockland County, N.Y., north of New York City, several communities have banded together to pursue state funding, “but they’re willing to take a tax hit” locally if needed to silence the train horns, he said.
U.S. requirements are distinctly different from those in Canada, where trains have rolled through many cities and villages for decades without whistling for crossings that may have an extra warning sign or two, but otherwise are guarded by just the normal lights and gates.
Before the current federal regulations took effect, Canada-like “quiet zones” were allowed to an extremely limited degree in the United States – primarily on main lines in the Chicago area, which with high-volume commuter train service along with freight traffic has the highest train density in North America, and to a lesser degree elsewhere.
Those zones have been grandfathered into the current regulations, but the communities in which they are located will be required to submit safety analyses to justify their long-term continuation without supplemental measures.
Warren Flatau, a railroad administration spokesman, said rule-makers opted for stricter safety provisions because Congress, in its 1994 order directing the agency to draft “quiet zone” regulations, specified that some sort of safety compensation be provided for. Furthermore, he said, domestic studies showed that except in metropolitan Chicago, collisions increased by 66 percent at crossings where train horns were silenced.
Canada’s regulations were adopted about 20 years ago to provide order to what had been a patchwork of local train-horn ordinances, said Daniel LaFontaine, chief of crossings for Transport Canada. Since then, he said, officials have required median dividers in places “where people are prone to go around the gates.”
Mr. LaFontaine said a 1995 analysis showed no significant increase in collision rates at no-whistle crossings in Canada. Another study was planned for 2000 but postponed indefinitely because of discussion about changing Canada’s crossing regulations, he said.
Last year, 45 percent of the 117 crossing collisions in Ohio occurred at crossings with lights and gates, and 18 percent occurred at lights-only crossings. Through August of this year, crossings that have at least flashing lights accounted for 41 of 73 crashes in Ohio, with 32 of those sites gate-equipped too.
Canada’s experience has been similar, with 119 of 237 nationwide crossing crashes last year and 116 of 183 through August this year occurring at sites with automatic warning devices.
Using state and federal funds, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio spends about $10 million annually on railroad crossing safety improvements. Rob Marvin, a PUCO spokesman, said that any state money for “quiet zone” projects would likely come from those funds, but he’d have reservations about spending for that purpose.
“There’s a finite amount of money, and I’m not sure it would be appropriate to divert funds that could be spent on lights-and-gates installations at rural crossings,” Mr. Marvin said.
Mr. Flatau said costs can be relatively low if an area has a mild accident history.
“This is an opportunity that most communities have never had a choice in,” he said. “The communities that want to do it will find a way.”