Quiet zone costs in question
By Ben Saylor
Rocky River
Published July 16, 2008

City officials are trying to get a sense of the engineering costs for a quiet zone following a report from Norfolk Southern that it would take more than half a million dollars for the city to obtain needed engineering to establish a quiet zone.

Mayor Pamela Bobst reported at City Council’s July 7 meeting that she had received estimates from Norfolk Southern as to the cost of needed engineering work on the city’s four railroad crossings in order to establish a quiet zone. The total figure given by Norfolk Southern was $680,000, Bobst reported. When she asked for a detailed breakdown of costs from that figure, Bobst said she was told that work on the Elmwood Road crossing would cost $330,000 and work on the remaining three crossings would cost $110,000, with an additional $20,000 for power outage indicators. The Elmwood crossing figure is higher because of a need for constant time warning circuitry at that crossing.

The $680,000 figure stands in contrast to lower estimates provided to the city by Railroad Controls Limited (RCL), an independent engineering company that performed estimates for the city in 2006. That firm estimated the Elmwood work to cost $175,000, with the remaining crossings costing $20,000.

Bobst said she forwarded the findings of RCL to Marty Gelfand, aide to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who told Bobst he would share the information with Ron Reis, director of crossing safety for Norfolk Southern.

This latest discrepancy of numbers comes after the city’s efforts to ascertain the correct train count to be used in determining whether supplemental safety measures (SSMs) needed to be installed before implementing a quiet zone. Norfolk Southern had informed the city that the train count used to calculate its risk index — the figure used to determine whether the city would need to implement SSMs — would be eight. Using that count, the city would be over the nationwide significant risk threshold (NSRT), meaning it would have to implement SSMs. However, Bobst said that Reis informed her that the per-day average number of trains is the correct number to use. The city’s average number of trains per month is generally less than five.

However, at a recent meeting conducted at Kucinich’s office regarding the 10th anniversary of the Conrail merger and the third anniversary of the federal quiet zone rule, among other topics, Bill Harris of Norfolk Southern said that “within regulatory systems, the definition of a train may differ.”

“The monthly train counts that Norfolk Southern provides the BRL [Bay Village, Rocky River and Lakewood] communities…are through freight trains. That is not the train count you use for quiet zones. The train count you use for quiet zones will be a different train count.”

At the meeting, Harris explained that the Norfolk Southern train count provided to the cities that were part of the 1998 agreement is a tally of through freight trains and does not include local trains, work trains or passenger trains.

After a conference call involving Harris, Reis and city officials, however, the city was informed by Harris that the official train count was four, putting the city below the NSRT.

City Council President James Moran said he was hopeful that “this will happen sooner or later without the high cost,” and reiterated that the city is not compromising safety in any way by pursuing the quiet zone, but is instead trying to make life more comfortable for residents living near railroad tracks.

Bobst described the process of attempting to implement a quiet zone in the city as “very frustrating,” and as “a long process for the residents.”

“This should be a more straightforward process than it has been,” Bobst told West Life. “But we’ll keep at it.”