Burlington, Iowa, quiet zone goes into effect

After years of waiting, Burlington, Iowa, residents were rewarded for their patience with a Christmas gift, The Hawkeye reports. At midnight Dec. 24, the city became a train horn quiet zone. Earlier this month, quiet zone status was granted by the Federal Railroad Administration based on safety modifications to downtown railroad crossings.

"I saw the train
coming, but I didn’t hear it. It was a strange feeling," said Marcus Lowe
of Naperville, who was waiting at the Burlington train depot Friday afternoon.
"I didn’t know what was going on until I heard somebody say something
about a quiet zone. I thought the horn was broke."

As the Amtrak train
snaked through the downtown, its horn remained silent at grade crossings.
Earlier in the day, a BNSF freight train was observed sounding its horn despite
the federal mandate.

"Our locomotive
engineers have received direction that the quiet zone is in place. Right after
a quiet zone goes into effect, horns sometimes will be sounded by the engineer
out of habit," said Steve Forsberg, spokesman for BNSF.

To earn quiet zone
status, the city needed to close or improve safety at crossings located along
BNSF rail lines to reduce its average risk assessment. The assessment is based
on several factors, including the number of accidents reported at each
crossing.

Safety modifications
included realigning the road on Seventh Street and constructing medians at
grade crossing at Valley, Fifth, Fourth, Jefferson/Hawkeye and Main streets and
Lucas Avenue.  Crossings at Third,
Seventh and Eighth streets have been closed. BNSF compensated the city about
$70,000 for the closures.

So far, the city has
spent roughly $388,734 for construction and engineering costs, according to
City Manager Doug Worden. Of that amount, $307,498 has been paid to M.J. Daly
Construction of Burlington for quiet zone construction, which was completed in
November.

"At one point, we
were looking at spending $1 million at each crossing. We got that number way
down. The price of this project is well worth what we have spent," Worden
said.

The much-maligned
"final rule" governing the loudness and duration of train horn
implemented by the FRA traces its roots to the 1980s. During that decade,
several municipalities in Florida enforced train horns bans during evening
hours. Communities were not required to make safety upgrades at crossings,
which led to a number of fatalities.

In 1994, the railroad administration
began drafting guidelines requiring trains to blow their horns at all grade
crossings after receiving its marching orders from Congress.  The mandate was in response to a study
that showed a correlation between a spike in traffic fatalities and whistle
bans.

The FRA’s final rule
enacted in 2005, which only applies to the sounding of locomotive horns at
public highway-rail grade crossings, sets 110 decibels as the maximum volume
horns can be sounded, with 96 decibels as the minimum. It also establishes
criteria for communities to set up quiet zones to offset train noise.