Trains that wind through the Downtown area with their horns sounding late into the night and through the early morning have always been a source of disturbance to residents. But with more people choosing to live Downtown, residents have come forward in numbers to seek relief and request assistance from the DLA.
The DLA has taken the initiative to get involved in the process to find a suitable solution for all parties, including the train companies, city officials, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), and Downtown residents.
You might say . . . Yes, but this is a long standing problem, legal requirements as well as safety conditions for pedestrians and motorists at street crossings warrant the sounding of horns.
Clearly any solution would need to respect the safety conditions at the crossings, but alternatives do exist and have been used successfully in other cities; solutions that can at least minimize the disturbing impact of the sound of train horns to residents in the short term, while planning for horn noise to be eliminated in the longer term.
One answer is simply to wait for the SEHR to arrive in Raleigh, and the problem essentially goes away. As you may know, the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor (SEHR) is a passenger rail transportation project extending high speed rail services from Washington D.C. through Richmond and Petersburg in Virginia and onto Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina. New tracks and grade separated street crossings will be required to handle these faster trains, negating the need for train horns altogether, as well as rerouting existing tracks for freight service.
While enduring the train horn disturbance for the interim is not a viable solution for residents, city officials could accept the status quo as a means of avoiding the need to potentially spend significant funds for specialized four quadrant crossing gates which would eliminate the train noise, but would eventually have to be dismantled as they do not meet the high speed train standards.
Over the past three months, the DLA has been focusing on finding both short and long term solutions that city officials, the various agencies, and the Downtown residents can accept. The DLA sees the train noise as being an integral part of the overall transportation corridor project, where the train tracks will not only serve the high speed corridor, but also the newly planned commuters light rail and the freight line. At the request of the Budget and Economic Development Committee in late June, the DLA researched the establishment of a quiet zone that would require train companies to stop sounding train horns through a designated quarter-mile area within the city. Unfortunately, to qualify for a quiet zone, the city would need to show no effect on safety, and could face costly liability issues. A better short-term solution now being recommended would be to install an Automated Horn System (AHS) that can be installed at each key crossing which would reduce significantly the noise impact of the train horn. DLA’s research shows the system to be cost effective and easy to install, directing the sound down onto track crossing where it is needed, and therefore creating less impact to the surrounding buildings.
The DLA has been requested by the mayor to present a progress report to the Budget and Economic Development Committee at their meeting scheduled for October 13th, and is committed to continuing its ongoing effort in this project on behalf of current and future Downtown residents. International Urbanist and Architect Saf Fahim, Design Principal of Archronica Architects, is a member of the DLA Advisory Committee and is leading this initiative.