(The following article by Korrina Grom was posted on the Antioch Review website on November 6.)
ANTIOCH, Ill. — At all hours of the night, residents of area towns who live anywhere near railroad tracks are jolted from their sleep by the sound of blaring train horns.
“When these trains come through during the sleeping hours of 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., their horn noise is heard to the point of awakening most people who are living at lateral distance of one mile and more to each side of the tracks,” Antioch resident Bob Schieck said. “It is truly noise pollution beyond reason.”
“They’re blowing the whistles at 2, 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning,” agreed Lake Villa Mayor Frank Loffredo. “You could shoot a cannon through downtown. There’s no one out. They’re not preventing accidents. They’re just annoying residents.”
Federal ruling
A new federal ruling requires trains to sound their horns continually as they go through railroad crossings.
Loffredo and other local officials and residents, including Antioch Mayor Taso Maravelas, say they’re ready to take some actions to rid their towns of the loud horns, following the lead of the village of Mundelein, which spearheaded a study of using automated train horns at railroad crossings.
“It’s proven to be 100 percent successful,” Loffredo said of Mundelein’s system. “They’ve been operating flawlessly.”
Mundelein’s study system, which has been in place since 2001 and was recently extended through October 2004, is in use at nine Mundelein-area railroad crossings. The automated train horns blow directly at the crossings.
“It’s kind of funneled into a specific area,” said Antioch Trustee Dorothy Larson. “And that makes more sense to me. It sounds like it’s been very successful. I would love to have something like that in Antioch.”
She doesn’t know the feasibility of having such a study done in Antioch.
“Everyone would like to see the train horns silenced. I live a block from the railroad tracks,” she said. “I don’t know if (the Mundelein study) is anything we could ever be a part of. At this point, we wouldn’t even be considered for it.”
Larson added that in 1999, the village was sued by a resident who was upset that the village wouldn’t ticket train operators who blew whistles late at night. The village prevailed in the lawsuit.
“We weren’t about to tell the railroad they can’t sound the horns. Our position then (was) I’d rather have half the town stay awake at night than to (have an accident),” Larson said. “We had what we considered to be the best interest of the community at heart.”
Time to implement
Loffredo said the prospect of having an automated train horn system in his town sounds great. A study, however, isn’t what Loffredo wants.
“At this time, personally, it’s already proven it works. I think we should push for the implementation,” he said. “They found something to (get rid of the noise). Now they just need to take the next step.”
Loffredo advocates officials and residents contacting local legislators to lobby the automated train horn system on behalf of area towns.
If Maravelas’ efforts pay off, some relief from train horn noise could soon come to Antioch. Maravelas and Antioch resident Alan Knutsen have been working with the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Canadian National railroad on a proposal that would both increase the safety at railroad crossings in Antioch and rid the village of train horn noise.
“We have some very good things coming up. We have a beautiful concept,” Maravelas said. The result, he said, would be “even better” than Mundelein’s automated train horns.
“We’re proposing with the Illinois Commerce Commission and Canadian National to extend the (crossing) arm another 5 feet. With doing that, we eliminate people … trying to bypass and go around it. It will be just like a stop light,” Maravelas said. “And it will eliminate blowing the horns.”