Portland looks at $1.1M solution for train noise
The city of Portland is looking at possible actions to stifle the blaring noise of horns from locomotives as they approach grade crossings in parts of the city – including spending an estimated $1.1 million for new railroad gate systems.
Of particular concern to Portland is that the Springfield Terminal Railway Co. tracks that run from Congress to Riverside streets are potentially in noncompliance with federal regulations.
“There are stretches, particularly in the Deering neighborhood where [crossings] are closely spaced, [where] you would have an endless series of horn soundings,” Jeremiah Bartlett, the city transportation systems engineer, told The Forecaster.
Bartlett estimates that the heavily traversed rails that are used by Pan Am freight trains and Amtrak Downeaster service to Brunswick can see an estimated two dozen train trips daily.
To remedy the situation, the city is looking at spending $800,000 in 2017’s capital improvement budget and approximately $300,000 that is on hand to engineer and install a more sophisticated quad railroad gate system at either the Allen or Brighton Avenue crossing.
The quad gate system is the most expensive solution to the noise at an estimated minimum cost of $1 million. Quad gates extend completely across roads, preventing drivers from avoiding them.
The Forecaster reported that the installation of one set of gates would buy Portland valuable time to develop other alternatives and to prevent the loss of the quiet zone designation that allows locomotives to approach grade crossings without using the required signal of their approach of two long, one short and one long whistles.
A report from the Federal Railroad Administration says that the last time a vehicle-train collision happened at the stretch was in 2008 on Riverside Street and that since 1975, 20 accidents have been logged. But the FRA combines local and national data to calculate its assessments and the index measuring safety keeps decreasing as the risk factors increase, Bartlett told The Forecaster.
This leaves the city with a score just at the compliance threshold, and the cost of compliance is completely on the city – which means Portland would like to start improvements within the year.
“Our hope would be we are not on the bubble of noncompliance,” Bartlett told The Forecaster. “If we were to neglect maintaining our current status and lost our designation, we would start from zero.”
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