City asks, Dinah, won’t you stow your horn?
By Jennifer Mitchell
Rocky River
Published April 26, 2006

Can’t you hear that whistle blowing? Chances are that many Rocky River residents can’t block it out. The 4.5-square-mile city has anywhere from one to three-and-a-half trains running through it daily, with federal law requiring locomotives to sound their horns as they approach street-level crossings.

A total of four publicly accessible crossings means the horn’s blare is constant while trains rumble down city tracks, Ward 3 Councilman Frank Gollinger said.

Last year, city officials began exploring the option of “quiet zones” and recently tested some of the technology at Wagar Road that would enable residents to finally get some peace and quiet.

Such areas give communities opportunities to turn down the railroad sound while keeping drivers and pedestrians safe.

To create a quiet zone, communities must either show that the lack of a train horn poses no risk or put in safety measures to reduce excess risk associated with the absence of a horn.

Rocky River still must determine how many cars are crossing daily at

the four sites — Wagar Road, Elmwood Road, Linda Street and Morewood Parkway — then coordinate the information with the number of daily trains.

“We put all of this into a formula the feds have that tells us what kinds of devices we need,” Mayor William Knoble said.

A demonstration by Railroad Controls Limited, suppliers of such equipment, allowed officials, including Knoble and Gollinger, to see one of those devices in action.

Known as a wayside horn, a stationary sound device is placed at the grade level crossing and sound is directed at oncoming motorists until the train reaches the intersection. It stands in the stead of the train’s horn.

“It sounded like a train horn with a bad cough,” Gollinger said. “It’s not (sounding) all the way down the track.”

Though tested at Wagar, after talks with a consultant Knoble said the city may only need a wayside horn for safety’s sake at Linda Street. The commercial road has driveways within 100 feet or less of the railway.

All four crossings already are equipped with gates and flashing lights. Besides the wayside horn, the addition of 100-foot medians at all crossings, for an estimated total of $110,000, could bring the city into federal quiet zone compliance regulations.

The medians create a barrier to prevent impatient drivers from trying to maneuver through the crossing while the gates are still down.

Railroads have indicated that they won’t bear any of the cost, so the city would have to fund such a program. A lot of “ifs” factor into what Rocky River could pay if it decides to move forward.

Knoble said that the cost — affordable or exorbitant — boils down to the existing circuitry and whether it is adaptable to the technology the city would need to acquire. Knoble said it’s something the city has its engineering firm, Mackay Engineering and Surveying Co., are looking into.

There are other concerns besides cost, the mayor said.

“We have to make sure it’s going to be as safe or safer,” he said.

But the benefits are evident, he added. The city would “have the ability to keep babies sleeping in the afternoon and to keep everybody sleeping at night.”