EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Residents annoyed by train horns are asking the Eugene City Council to consider silencing them in the city.
Eugene is looking into what it can or should do about noisy train horns through so-called railroad quiet zones, The Register-Guard reported Sunday.
Federal regulations require train engineers to sound locomotive horns for 15 to 20 seconds as they approach crossings where tracks intersect with streets. But that requirement can be eliminated if certain safety improvements are made.
Train engineers can still sound horns to warn pedestrians and motorists for safety reasons at quiet zone crossings.
About 600 quiet zones have been established throughout the country, including in the Oregon cities of Portland, Milwaukie, Salem and Tualatin.
The City Council’s initial focus for a quiet zone has been on a 1½-mile stretch of Union Pacific Railroad tracks leading from the east edge of downtown through much of the Whiteaker neighborhood.
But resident Jon Belcher and others have asked Mayor Kitty Piercy and city councilors also to examine other areas for quiet zones. Several hundred people also signed an online petition.
“If you are going to look at having quiet zones for trains, you ought to consider the entire city, not just the downtown core,” Belcher told the newspaper.
Potential redevelopment of riverfront property, including condos, offices, shops, restaurants and a public park, has prompted interest in quiet train horns in downtown. But residents throughout the city have long complained about the horn noise.
Cities can create quiet zone corridors by installing extra crossing arms, medians and other barriers to prevent motorists from sneaking across railroad tracks when a train approaches. Cities can also convert streets to one-way traffic or close crossings, among other measures.
But the changes can be expensive. City traffic engineer Tom Larsen said double-arm crossing gates and other equipment can cost up to $1 million per crossing.
The city of Eugene has yet to select which crossings might be changed, what kind of crossing improvements it might make, or find the money to pay for them, the Register-Guard reported.
Salem spent $2.6 million to put in place a quiet zone near the city center that covered 10 railroad crossings. The city financed the project through a $99.8 million voter-approved property tax measure that paid for a variety of street and other transportation-related projects.
