Who Would Ever Have Thought?

Certainly not government.  When the "planners" decided that a commuter rail line between Beaverton and Wilsonville was worth the diversion investment of transport dollars to "improve" the existing Portland & Western Railroad tracks and associated "upgrades", it never occurred to them that the rules for heavy rail differ greatly from the usual streetcar-ry things.  For one thing, on railroads, it's required that the horn be sounded four times at each public crossing.

Between the regular trains and the TriMet "commuter trains" folks in the city of Tualatin are treated to 1,280 weekday horn blasts, and they aren't liking it much.  This was an unanticipated issue, as is usually the case when government tries to run something.  TriMet, therefore, is trying to get a waiver so that their wildly unpopular commuter trains can be quieter.  The idea seems to be to just let them kind of sneak through towns.

This place was founded upon the concept of limited government.  Apparently, there's no such thing.

Comments

[OregonGuy]

Wanna hoot?

The Oregon Constitution prohibits the State from investing in rail.

'Course, nobody reads the Oregon Constitution. And nobody expects the State Supreme Court to enforce the written word of that document.
.

[ZZMike]

There's a similar horn problem near here. A railroad track runs through Tustin, CA, and it carries both Amtrak and 100-car freight trains. It's right next to a large apartment complex at one point. Naturally, the trains have been merrily tooting away day and night for years.

The city has been working - also for years - to see if the trains can't just pipe down in the city. I think they got a few minor concessions, but nothing significant. The city put up high-tech crossing gates, but that didn't help. (A few stalwart souls still zip through the gates as they're coming down.) It takes 4 or 5 minutes for one of those 100-car trains to get through the intersection (which happens to be on a mjor street).

One problem is that horns are dictated by the Feds, and cities can't override them.

[Eddie]

I love the theory that a partial reduction of volume can be made up for with more lights. The effectiveness of horn or siren isn't a straight line function; if you reduce the volume 50% you don't necessarily reduce the effectiveness by 50%, you might actually be reducing it to near 0.

To clarify, if a certain volume is necessary to be heard in a closed automobile, let alone with radio and air conditioning/heating running, then any less than that volume and you might as well turn the thing off completely.

I feel for the residents along the train line, because I suspect very few of them bought their homes realizing a high-frequency service would be placed there. However, I don't think compromise on safety regulations is the answer.

[Max]

Excellent points, Eddie, I wonder whether or not it occurred to anyone in the brain trust federal law regulates not only the number of blasts required at each crossing, but also the minimum decible level.

As OG notes, our state Constitution prohibits government investment in rail, although this is largely a carryover from the settlement days when the robber barons were laying the track. Still, it was a wise provision because the authors rightly guessed that such investment might motivate corrupt partnerships.

In regard to the WES line in particular, you're quite right - Tualatin has always been a sleepy, sparsely-settled, semirural little town (until the past couple of decades of centralized "planning" at the hands of the regional government). Those folks who lived along the line understood that it was there before they were, and were content with the periodic freight trains passing through.

Then the "planning" hit, and townhouses, condos, and other development pushed in. The addition of so many residents - and their cars - spawned incredible congestion in the area, Naturally, the "planners" responded by spending millions in reaching an agreement with the rail owners, "upgrading" the line, and adding commuter trains.

Few people actually use the thing; it operates at a loss of several hundred thousand dollars each month, but operate it does - a dozen or so times each day; far more frequently than the bucolic freight trains.

[Eddie]

From the Oregon Live article: "TriMet in June petitioned the Federal Railroad Administration to waive rules requiring 96-decibel horn honks for quieter options ... (TriMet) wants to sound horns at 80 decibels and bells at 60 decibels for most crossings, with only bells in downtown Beaverton."

They do regulate the volume of horns and bells for trains, but apparently TriMet believes they know train safety better.