By Amelia Nielson-Stowell
Deseret Morning News
DRAPER — Armed with a petition, residents of this south Salt Lake Valley city had a message for Draper and Utah Transit Authority officials: We don’t want TRAX as a neighbor.
More than 200 people crowded the council chambers and overflowed into the halls Tuesday night, most to speak out against a proposed light-rail line on the old Union Pacific Railroad tracks.
That line cuts through neighborhoods, would disturb the Porter Rockwell trail and could decrease property values. On top of that, there are safety, noise, pollution, ground vibrations, traffic, lights, environmental impacts — issues that have yet to be studied, residents said.
“We don’t think light rail coming through this Draper neighborhood makes any sense,” said Summer Pugh, a Draper resident who headed up the petition against the route.
In three days, Pugh garnered almost 800 signatures.
“We’re looking at trains running through our neighborhoods every 15 minutes,” she said.
That right-of-way was purchased by UTA in 1993, with the intention that light rail eventually would be built on the tracks, said G.J. LaBonty, project manager with UTA.
A yearlong study by a panel of UTA, Draper and Wasatch Front Regional Council officials found that the best alternative for a TRAX line to the south end of Salt Lake County would be on the hard-rail tracks that hook past City Hall, 1300 East, along Highland Drive and end at South Mountain. The alternative alignment is a near-straight route on State Street, along the I-15 freeway.
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I get the impression that these particular NIMBY’s have not really done any homework. I live less than a block away from a light-rail line and ride it every day. A light-rail line is likely to increase property values, not decrease them. (“Close access to two major highways, bus route, and light-rail line”). As light-rail is electric (as least where I live it is), there is no pollution. Ground vibrations? Are they living on land that could be compared to a bowl of jello?
Safety/traffic was a major problem when San Jose first put the light-rail system into operation. The left turn signals were particularly confusing and there were several accidents. The signalling system was adjusted, and such accidents are quite rare now.
Businesses in the immediate neighborhood of a light-rail station can expect to see a significant increase in customers.
And a well-operated light-rail system signicantly reduces rush-hour traffic, both on freeways and on city streets.
“There are safety, noise, pollution, ground vibrations, traffic, lights, environmental impacts — issues that have yet to be studied, residents said”… How do they define the enviromental impacts of the privately owned automobile en masse, as seen on a busy highway, or for that matter, an expressway? They are well known and need no study. It is proven in many examples that, in fact, a light rail line increases property values and spurs development. One of the biggest errors in urban or community planning and development was designing “carburbias” whose very existance is based on cheap oil.
Same BS aurguments a bunch of whining NIMBYs here used when the MTA light rail line to where I live was built. A small but vocal group in one community didnt want a light rail system under any circumstance and used similar logic. Mind you only a couple years before all this fuss, there were juggernaut freight trains ripping through this residential area! They griped about noise, which there was very very little of, property values, which went WAY up, and dangerous frequency at crossings, which in the last 5 years there hasnt been one crossing accident. As more time went by the crybabies became less in number, and are today virtually silent.
Like here, this group of residents will learn to do one of the following:
Learn to use it, and maybe like most users here, like it.
Learn to live with it, and shut the hell up about it.
Say train to the general public and they think giant heavy rail like they see in the movies or saw when they grew up. Light rail is so different they have no grasp of it. I bet if they said they were putting in a trolley line about 2/3 of those people would drop off the petition. The other 1/3 just signs to get the person to go away or is the type that would protest giving $100 to each resident for nothing. If they wait long enough, maybe they can get the professional protesters out there (we have a bunch here in DC I can send them). Nice work if you can get it I suppose.
Another concept lost to them is something called “the greater public good.” Their idea of community begins and ends at their property lines. They feign indifference, or at worst contempt toward it, as if our collective sun rose and fell in their self serving armpits.
The increase in property values could be the real problem…increased property values mean a higher assessed valuation and more taxes on a constant tax rate (and when have tax rates ever remained constant.)
this is not a new line but an extension of the TRAX line that parallels I15. However, a few miles away, developers are considering paying to have light rail in their development.
Of course common sense doesn’t exist for NIMBY’s.IF you want peace and quiet and no interuptions in your life,THEN don’t buy or build next to or in any proximity of A) a railroad, B) an airport, or C) a major highway.When are these people going to get a clue?
Here in New Jersey the Morristown & Erie has been restoring the old Rahway Valley ROW in fits and starts, and currently it’s stalled due to lack of funds. The NIMBY crowd has been going full bore against it since it was proposed several years ago, and they even have their own website dedicated to it: http://www.stopthetrain.org/index.cfm.
Their “Toxic Creosote” page should give you a laugh. They were claiming that creosoted RR ties would poison their kids. [:O] I sent them an email saying, among other things, that they’d better have the telephone poles ripped out of their neighborhoods, and that I hoped none of them had used ties in their own landscaping. I didn’t get a reply.
It is a sad state of affairs and a poor reflection on our nation as a whole. These folks have been able to raise a hue and cry against the very form of transportation that fueled their comunity some many years ago. Where are the people who will benifit from the extension. Have they no voice in this matter. Are their voices mearly silent and they expect the politicians to speak to their interest? I would spaek up if I wanted this built. Kansas City, MO has managed to squash all recent attempts at light rail but we will keep trying.
A semantic correction may be appropriate here - these people may not be NIMBYs. They may in fact be BANANAs - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. There’s a lot of that going around, too.
As for grade crossings - I rode the light rail from BWI to downtown Balto a couple years ago. They just gave a couple of quick toots at each crossing, not the traditional _ _ , _. All the crossings had gates. I’d hazard that the neighbor kid’s boombox would be more annoying.
And in Green Bay, we had a huge hue & cry over converting the Milwaukee Road ROW into a hiking/biking trail along the Fox River. One of the complaints was the adverse effect on property values (compared to 4 locomotive, 100+ car freights that used to be there?). I always thought the Village tax assesor should keep copies of the same complaints for tax time!
Never underestimate the power of positive ignorance! (Note, too, that the more ignorant they are, the more positive they are.)
Sounds as if one woman with a profound aversion to mass transportation collected a dozen sheets of signatures, so that makes her an authority (at least in the mind of some technologically challenged media type who didn’t have the knowledge to call her bluff.) Also, it appears that the people who see the benefits of mass transportation stayed away in droves. Democracy at its finest!
I wonder what Summer Pugh’s reaction would be if somebody quietly passed a special tax on her SUV, refundable if she used light rail for at least one trip a month.
Here in San Jose, light rail trains do not signal at crossings at all. None of the grade crossings are marked and none have gates, except for a section where the light rail runs alongside other track.
The engineer might ring the bell on approach to a grade crossing, but would only blow the horn if vehicles/people were obstructing the track (particularly drivers who enter the intersection knowing that they won’t be able to get all the way across, so they just sit there on the tracks).
At the risk of being a heretic in the band of true believers, this is why public hearings are held.
NIMBY’s don’t just go after railroads. As someone stated, they don’t like change at all. And if they are wealthy, well- forget anything in their neighborhood.
I saw this kind of reasoning when the city of Phoenix offered to extend bus service into some wealthy neighborhoods. The same sort of hue and cry arose. What the people were afraid of was that the “criminal” element would use the mass transit to invade THEIR neighborhoods. They preferred picking up the household staff at a bus stop a few miles away and dropping them off late at night (usually after the bus lines shut down- 9:30PM).
The NIMBY’s have always been with us. The Connecticut Turnpike, now I-95, has a notorious turn when it reaches New Haven, Connecticut. You also have a near right turn if you are going south from I-91 into I-95. Were the engineers who designed that connection drunk? No- they carefully avoided residential neighborhoods. Back in the 50’s and 60’s government listened to the voters- particularly the loud ones.
The NIMBY cause is best served when the true believers (i.e. all railfans) get together and sign petitions. It helps a lot when you can appear at public hearings having done your homework. If you can show, by fact, not railfan hyperbole (what? frothing at mouth on TRAINS.COM happens?) that this program will IMPROVE the lifestyle of a neighborhood, you are doing well. It helps if you live in the neighborhood as well.
Here’s a hint. TV and print media love to catch the odd and unusual. They make money off of the mothers who stand on their front yards and protest the light rail line (or the bus). Everyone sympathizes with their plight, especially because government is really poor at public relations.
If you want a really positive reaction from your local elected reprresentativ
Simple solution, tell the whole town that since they don’t want it in this one neighborhood and that you are going to spend the extra cash to go AROUND Draiper. One bunch making it bad for the rest of the comminuty. See if that changes the thinking ok some people. If not, there are 2 options, do it anyway, and tell the people too bad or actually spend the cash and go around Draiper. Well thats what I would do if it were my decision.
