For decades,
residents along Orange County's three main railroad tracks could do little
about the whistles. But a 13-month-old federal law called the Train Horn
Rule has given them a chance to win, to their ears, peace.
"It's very irritating it's noise pollution," says Isabel
Reed, 68, who lives a block from a line that runs by Lincoln Avenue near
17th Street in Santa Ana.
"It's like having somebody with a jackhammer. You have
this quiet then you have this blast that puts you on edge."
Reed and others intend to approach the Santa Ana City
Council on Monday and hand over petitions with more than 600 signatures from
their neighborhood.
Congress created the Train Horn Rule to blanket the
country with a simple law that most states, including California, already
had: One quarter-mile from every street crossing, an engineer must toot two
longs, one short and one long.
But Congress also created an out: quiet zones.
If sufficient safeguards are added to keep vehicles and
pedestrians off tracks at crossings keeping the risk of injury or death
equal to when horns are blown then cities can set up quiet zones in which
engineers only hit the horn for emergencies.
Placentia is poised to get a quiet zone. Residents in
Santa Ana, Orange and Tustin are seeking one.
But there are costs: Some engineers feel safer hitting the
horn, safeguards can require millions of dollars and city officials harbor a
lingering concern about lawsuits if accidents do occur.
In Orange, there are 16 street crossings, a shortage of up
to $7.5 million to qualify them and 1,000-plus residents who signed a
petition and want relief.
The Orange-Olive line runs 40 feet from the bedroom window
of Jim Ott, a retired firefighter: "I think you could be dead and it would
wake you up."
In April, a team of representatives from various
transportation agencies, including state and railroad officials, examined
Orange's crossings to see how to make them safe enough to pass federal
guidelines.
Quadrant
crossing gates which seal off tracks from motorists, unlike conventional
ones that motorists can meander around were suggested at some spots. At
less congested areas, raised medians could keep cars from cheating onto the
tracks.
Communities can also deploy photo-enforcement cameras and
stationary horns at the gates that are triggered by trains and are less
noisy.
In Orange, like elsewhere, at least some residents and
some officials hope to somehow, someday, find the money.
"Once we found out how expensive it was, it took our
breath away," says Tom Mahood, Orange's traffic engineer.
Train engineer Tim Smith says the best answer would be for
quiet-zone safety enhancements to be put in place and to still let his
brethren blow the whistle.
"The engineer has it engraved in his head like I have
for 34 years," says Smith, chairman of the California State Legislative
Board, the engineers' union. "It's not gray you blow the stinking whistle.
"To me, it should be an automatic reflex: An engineer sees
a crossing, he blows the whistle," says Smith, saying it could be
disconcerting if engineers are to blow in this stretch but not that one.
"The more minutiae you throw at people, the more people forget. And we don't
want people to forget.
That horn is your friend."
A Metrolink train typically goes 50 mph in an urban area
like Santa Ana and can reach 90 mph in more rural stretches of Irvine. It
takes a third of a mile for an engineer to stop a Metrolink train and a mile
for a freighter to stop.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 12
people were killed and 28 injured driving or walking through a crossing in
the county during the decade ending in December. That excludes suicides and
those killed while walking on the tracks away from a crossing.
About a dozen communities none in Southern California
have established quiet zones under Congress' new guidelines.
Reed and her husband, Jim, moved to their well-kept '50s
Santa Ana tract home 39 years ago.
On
the main line between Orange and Irvine that goes by the Reeds, 64 passenger
and freight trains trundle a weekday, Orange County Transportation Authority
officials say. Twelve years ago, there were about 25 trains. By 2015, the
number could climb to 109.
Jim Ross, executive director of Santa Ana's public works
department, says safety improvements are being made at the city's 10
crossings but it would take $5 million that Santa Ana doesn't have
budgeted to meet quiet-zone regulations.
Another, perhaps more daunting hurdle for Santa Ana and
other communities: If officials get horns silenced, and an accident occurs,
could the city be dragged into a multimillion dollar lawsuit?
"It will be the first lawsuit getting filed in a quiet
zone that decides it," Ross says.
Down the line in Tustin, city officials are taking steps
to silence trains that cross Red Hill Avenue, just north of Edinger Avenue,
to help out residents in several hundred nearby homes. More than $1 million
is budgeted.
Art Brown is mayor of Buena Park, where a new Metrolink/Amtrak
station is rising, chairman of OCTA and heads the agency that runs the
five-county Metrolink.
He sees more trains coming through and lots of quiet
zones in the county.
"People are going to insist on it," Brown says. "It's
either (do it) now or later, but you're going to have to do it because
that's what the residents are going to demand."
