thehappysmith
December 21st, 2007, 10:27 PM
I almost wrote "horny trains" for the title but decided to act my age.
All forumers who live downtown, will, I assume, be familiar with the occasional appearance of the 2 AM train. I've been here for over years and I can tell you the 2 AM has been around the entire time and surely for many years before that.
CSX owns the track that goes along Polk St. Between the Cass St Bridge and Jefferson St, a distance of 1/2 mile, there are 9 grade crossings. All trains blow their horns in a long-long-short-long pattern through these grade crossings as required by federal law. The speed limit through downtown is 10 mph.
If you haven't been awakened by the train and stared at your clock as it passed through town, you are a lucky person. However, I can tell you from long experience that the engineers on the 2 AM train often travel through downtown at less than 3 mph, sometimes taking over 1/2 hour to get from the Poe Garage (I can tell when the train is behind the Poe by the way the horn volume and pitch change when he appears at Ashley) to Jefferson.
Additional federal regulations require that engineers sound the horn for at least 15 but not more than 20 seconds before entering the grade crossing. At times I've clocked the engineers taking over 40 seconds to get the long-long-short-long pattern out; the FRA could investigate this and reprimand the engineers involved, but I'm not sure the word ever gets beyond CSX.
I've complained to CSX so many times that their complaint line is programmed into my phone (904-359-3200; if you call you're reporting a safety issue but not an emergency), but it's had no effect whatsoever.
Mayor Iorio wants downtown to be a livable neighborhood. I don't really appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night two nights a week, and while I'm sure some folks sleep right through it I know I'm not the only one who wakes up. It's hard to call a neighborhood "livable" when you can expect to be awakened at 2 AM two nights a week.
Thankfully the Federal Railroad Administration has an out for us, called "quiet zones." I'm behind on my legislation but this has been available for two years. Essentially the local government can set up a quiet zone as long as it is at least 1/2 mile in length and has at least one public grade crossing. I've written to the mayor to suggest creating a quiet zone at least between the bridge and Jefferson, but possibly extending from Boulevard to Nebraska or Channelside. I'm sending similar messages to my councilman (Tom Scott) and to Saul-Sena, Mulhern, and Miller, who are at-large.
If you are ever annoyed by late-night train whistles I encourage you to do the same. The city website has telephone, email, and snail mail contact info for the mayor and all councilmen. A polite and grammatically correct letter that couches the quiet-zone issue in terms of downtown livability will probably get farther than email, but anything is better than nothing. If they don't manage to set up a quiet zone (doing so may require grade crossing improvements neither the city nor CSX wants to pay for) at least the issue will have been raised and the city and CSX can agree to monitor the length and frequency of horn blasts during the overnight hours, which is done on a stretch of the main line in Clay County.
All forumers who live downtown, will, I assume, be familiar with the occasional appearance of the 2 AM train. I've been here for over years and I can tell you the 2 AM has been around the entire time and surely for many years before that.
CSX owns the track that goes along Polk St. Between the Cass St Bridge and Jefferson St, a distance of 1/2 mile, there are 9 grade crossings. All trains blow their horns in a long-long-short-long pattern through these grade crossings as required by federal law. The speed limit through downtown is 10 mph.
If you haven't been awakened by the train and stared at your clock as it passed through town, you are a lucky person. However, I can tell you from long experience that the engineers on the 2 AM train often travel through downtown at less than 3 mph, sometimes taking over 1/2 hour to get from the Poe Garage (I can tell when the train is behind the Poe by the way the horn volume and pitch change when he appears at Ashley) to Jefferson.
Additional federal regulations require that engineers sound the horn for at least 15 but not more than 20 seconds before entering the grade crossing. At times I've clocked the engineers taking over 40 seconds to get the long-long-short-long pattern out; the FRA could investigate this and reprimand the engineers involved, but I'm not sure the word ever gets beyond CSX.
I've complained to CSX so many times that their complaint line is programmed into my phone (904-359-3200; if you call you're reporting a safety issue but not an emergency), but it's had no effect whatsoever.
Mayor Iorio wants downtown to be a livable neighborhood. I don't really appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night two nights a week, and while I'm sure some folks sleep right through it I know I'm not the only one who wakes up. It's hard to call a neighborhood "livable" when you can expect to be awakened at 2 AM two nights a week.
Thankfully the Federal Railroad Administration has an out for us, called "quiet zones." I'm behind on my legislation but this has been available for two years. Essentially the local government can set up a quiet zone as long as it is at least 1/2 mile in length and has at least one public grade crossing. I've written to the mayor to suggest creating a quiet zone at least between the bridge and Jefferson, but possibly extending from Boulevard to Nebraska or Channelside. I'm sending similar messages to my councilman (Tom Scott) and to Saul-Sena, Mulhern, and Miller, who are at-large.
If you are ever annoyed by late-night train whistles I encourage you to do the same. The city website has telephone, email, and snail mail contact info for the mayor and all councilmen. A polite and grammatically correct letter that couches the quiet-zone issue in terms of downtown livability will probably get farther than email, but anything is better than nothing. If they don't manage to set up a quiet zone (doing so may require grade crossing improvements neither the city nor CSX wants to pay for) at least the issue will have been raised and the city and CSX can agree to monitor the length and frequency of horn blasts during the overnight hours, which is done on a stretch of the main line in Clay County.