JACKSONVILLE, FL – Tired of train horns in the middle of the night? A deal’s been struck to move some train traffic away from one of the First Coast’s busiest rail lines.
CSX, based in Jacksonville, has made a deal with the state of Florida. It’s a sort of trade.
The company will sell the state 61 miles of prime track near Orlando. The track will be used for a new commuter train system there. In return, CSX takes home the money from that sale, plus another $300 million to fix up its tracks all over the state.
That $300 million means train traffic along Roosevelt Boulevard, or US 17, on Jacksonville’s Westside will start dropping.
But soon, the sounds along Roosevelt Blvd. will be changing. To steer its freight trains around the Orlando area, CSX plans to redesign tracks and reroute trains on the First Coast.
Eventually, one-third of the 30 trains a day that come through the Westside route along US 17 will move further west, to the tracks that run along US 301.
“Obviously, it’s a good deal for us, and one that will improve freight capacity in the state, and that’s certainly good for Florida,” said CSX Corporation spokesman Gary Sease.
I guess in a way this idea that the state of FL and CSX Transportation have is better than setting up, noise ordaninces (sp) states that trains aren’t allowed to blow their horns during certain times of the day and/or night. In this way lives and lawsuits can be saved.
Off subject sort of: We in the great city and state of Philadelphia, PA have a Roosevelt Blvd
(aka The Bully), it goes all the way up to New York, NY. It is also made up of 12 lanes of northeast corridor highway traffic. Pretty big and dangerous road.
Eva: The Federal Railroad Administration has recently preempted local anti-horn blowing at grade crossings ordinances. They require communities to set up safety devices at the grade crossings to prevent vehicles and pedestrians from getting on the track when a train approaches in order to enact ordinances to ban horn blowing at grade crossings.