San Pedro Valley News-Sun - Arizona / March 6, 2007
Fine the railroad
This may sound hilarious or absurd to some people in town: Let’s charge Union Pacific Railroad fines for the noise level extremes that they are always creating daily. First violation of more than 110 decibels of sound from the air horns and they will face a $2,500 fine imposed by our city government. Second violation, double the fine to $5,000 per subsequent infractions.
The outrageous noise levels from these horns are exceeding 150 decibels in strength. Better yet, since they obviously bring no jobs to our county; let alone our city I suggest making a “toll” system which will charge them every time they come through Benson so that we can raise the money for the crossings to become safer.
Safety is a joke as they come through town at ridiculous rates of speed at all hours and scare the living daylights out of all us residing here or visiting this township called Benson. Those crossings cannot be made “safe” without spending more than six figures per crossing. Our city coffers are not as deep as Union Pacific thinks it is! The need for a quieter railway system will never cease to be an issue. That company has a monopoly just because of its existence since before this community was incorporated many decades ago! No one will ever be able to change this volatile noise that is destroying our hearing abilities over time.
These train air horns are fully adjustable and this has been a fact for decades, just do the research if you disagree
The guy who wrote this piece, Shuan Scott, is an idiot. Locomotive horns are blown at grade crossings for a darned good reason. If he fails to stop, look and listen at a grade crossing and gets slammed into by a Union Pacific train, it is my supposition that he would naturally want to sue the railroad. I don’t think Mr. Scott has done enough research of his own.
Some rewording…now this crank letter makes even more surrealistic sense if you thought it did in the first place.
This may sound hilarious or absurd to some people in town: Let’s charge the Fire Department fines for the noise level extremes that they are always creating daily. First violation of more than 110 decibels of sound from the air horns and sirens and they will face a $2,500 fine imposed by our city government. Second violation, double the fine to $5,000 per subsequent infractions.
The outrageous noise levels from these horns are exceeding 150 decibels in strength. Better yet, since they obviously bring no jobs to our county; let alone our city I suggest making a “toll” system which will charge them every time they come through Benson so that we can raise the money for the city to become safer.
Safety is a joke as they come through town at ridiculous rates of speed at all hours and scare the living daylights out of all us residing here or visiting this township called Benson. Those intersections cannot be made “safe” without spending more than six figures per crossing. Our city coffers are not as deep as the Fire Department thinks it is! The need for a quieter city streets will never cease to be an issue. That Fire Department has a monopoly just because of its existence since before this community was incorporated many decades ago! No one will ever be able to change this volatile noise that is destroying our hearing abilities over time.
These sirens are fully adjustable and this has been a fact for decades, just do the research if you disagree
If (God forbid) Shaun or one of his family members or friends were hit by a train due to the engineer being unable to blow his/her horn, something tells me Shaun would be the first into court to sue the railroad.
Somehow I envision this guy as your average neighborhood crank the kind that waves his cane at neighborhood dogs…“D__n dogs!”, putting trip wires on his lawn, wears an aluminum foil hat and eats his dinner out of a can…while writing his congressman to lower his trash bill…get a life…
Today’s society of victims are very flexible. They can be victimized by the train threat to safety as well as to the warning to keep them safe. I thought the figure of 150 db was a bit of a stretch. That is the sound of a jet engine from 100 feet. Very few people can relate to the decible scale because it is not linear. The difference between 100 and 110 db is much greater than the difference between 50 and 60 db, for example. Eventually locomotive horns will be replaced with automatically activated bells and whistles inside our cars (amoung other things).
I’ve often wondered why a railroad doesn’t just make a deal with any town or city wanting to have trains eliminate their horns. “We will not blow a single horn in your quiet little town, as soon as you purchase some sort of insurance policy to pay for any claims this quiet zone policy causes, and your city agrees in writing to assume any liability involving this new policy”. Problem solved, as soon as the city in question can find someone to underwrite that policy at an afordable rate.[;)]
Or find out just how ‘affordable’ the rate would be! I doubt that even Lloyd’s would touch that one!
A reasonable alternative would be for the municipality to assume the railroad’s liability for all accidents not involving mechanical failure of railroad-owned property - and then make sure to transfer the crossing warning devices to the municipality.
The municipality could make enough money to afford it by charging the residents tolls for using their driveways.
“The trouble with designing things to be foolproof is that God keeps creating bigger fools.” (anon)
If blowing the horn is a noise nuisance, then stop blowing the horn. If that causes a safety problem, then have the trains slow down and come to a stop, if necessary, to avoid hitting cars or pedestrians that may be unaware of the train’s existance due to the lack of a horn. [4:-)] As we all very well know, it must always be the train’s fault, right? After all, it is the train that hits the car, not the other way around. [sigh]
Hey, everybody, are you sure this letter writer is correct when he objects to the sound of “air horns?”
Aren’t we all assuming that this character is writing about locomotive mounted horns?
His objection could be, in fact, to that relatively new technology that has been installed in some communities wherein the crossing flashers and gates loudly announce the passing of trains with their own, electronically simulated locomotive horns. The engineer doesn’t blow for the crossing, it all happens wayside automatically!
Downtown Gering, Nebr. has one of these installations and it’s loud enough to wake the dead. What makes this technology so intrusive is that the sound is directed outward from the crossing which is to say perpendicular to the tracks. This differs from conventional crossings in that the diesel horn broadcasts its tones parallel to the track, which is to say generally perpendicular to the crossing.
The hardware installed in downtown Kearney, Nebr. is even more offensive because the bleating noise from the crossing signals travels down an acoustic pipeline that is defined by hard pavement on the bottom and two-to-three story brick bu
I do believe that the writer made reference to the cost of upgrading the crossings to enhance public safety. If the crossings are in dire need of safety upgrades, it is doubtful that this “new technology” is in place.