Capital Metro Muffled

[gatorback]

By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, December 28, 2007

Capital Metro, after four nights of blaring train horns last week infuriated nearby North Austin residents, said Thursday that it will not resume testing commuter trains until it finds a less noisy alternative.

"One way or another, we will figure out how to quiet the testing," said Rich Krisak, the agency's commuter rail director. The good news, he said, was that the two Swiss-manufactured trains performed almost perfectly on their initial shakeout runs. The two trains, which under federal rules must log 1,000 miles each of trouble-free run time before carrying paying customers, put in about 400 miles last week.

Rich Krisak vows to find way to test more quietly.
What's this?

But Capital Metro has bought six commuter trains, meaning that at least 5,600 miles of testing remains. Absent changes, that would mean a lot of sleepless nights for the residents of Ashton Woods and Hidden Estates.

Those changes, Krisak said, could involve moving the testing from North Austin, where federal rules still require blowing the horns when a train passes a street crossing, to a "quiet zone" to the south in the rail line's 4.8-mile run from U.S. 183 to Interstate 35.

Capital Metro has installed four-armed gates in the Crestview-Wooten area that, under a permit with the Federal Railroad Administration, mean trains can pass streets without sounding horns.

Quad gates have not yet been installed and quiet zones have not been established, however, in the 4.3-mile interval between U.S. 183 and McNeil Road where the testing occurred during the wee hours of Dec. 17 through Dec. 20.

Residents of adjacent Ashton Woods and Hidden Estates â€" who earlier this year tussled with Capital Metro over a proposed station location, which was later changed â€" lost considerable sleep during the testing. And they made sure Capital Metro and the politicians overseeing the agency heard about it.

"I was kept awake by your new train blasting its horn just outside my bedroom window ALL NIGHT LONG," Kent Maysel, who lives in an apartment on Gracy Farms Lane, said in an e-mail from 6:51 a.m. Dec. 19. "I thought you were installing quad crossing gates so the horn would not be necessary. Or was this a PsyOp to get people to hate rail and CapMetro (in which case it worked marvelously)?"

A torrent of angry e-mails from other groggy residents followed, grabbing the attention of at least two Austin City Council members. One of them, Lee Leffingwell, suggested in a Christmas Eve e-mail to the agency that sound walls along the rail line might be necessary. Council Member Brewster McCracken, a Capital Metro board member, said he was concerned and would ask Capital Metro staff for more information.

Krisak said the commuter rail staff would meet with board members and senior agency staff next week to explore quieter options. After a rail bridge over the Union Pacific line at McNeil is complete in a couple of months, Krisak said, testing could also take place farther north in a largely rural stretch.

One option that is off the table, according to Krisak: moving the commuter rail testing to daytime hours.

That would require federal permission, and it would mean freight trains would be running at night in East Austin. No quiet zones have been established there yet, so three to four freight trains (which now run during the day) would have to blow their horns at night and wake up a different set of residents if such a switch occurred.

Krisak said that as the fall opening of the commuter service from Leander to downtown Austin nears, perhaps by summer, the East Austin quiet zones should be in place, allowing daytime commuter train testing throughout the line's 32-mile run.

[gatorback]

Awe shucks.

[Lunican]

They could close the roads at night to take the crossing out of service. Or buy everyone ear plugs.

[Lunican]

Jacksonville doesn't have that problem because they went ahead and outlawed it...

Sec. 734.115. Sounding of train horns and whistles.
(a)   Between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. on any day, when a railroad train is traveling within the City of Jacksonville, it shall be unlawful for any person, business or corporation operating such railroad train of a railroad company wholly within the State of Florida to blow, activate, or in any way permit or cause the blowing or activation of train whistles and/or horns in advance of any public railroad-highway grade crossing.
(b)   This section relates only to public railroad-highway grade crossings having train-activated automatic traffic control devices, which include flashing lights, bells and crossing gates.
(c)   Violations of this section by any person, business or corporation shall constitute a class D offense.

I wonder how many illegal ordinances Jacksonville has passed.

[gatorback]

well.  there you have it then.