Concrete medians installed by the City of Nevada, Iowa for their Quiet Zone in 2008. Photo courtesy of Walt MacDonald.

Fairfield City Council has hired a Quiet Zone specialist Andrew Mielke of SRF Consulting using funds donated by the Fairfield Train Safety and Quiet Zone Committee. His job is to advise the City Council on how to implement their resolution of November 2007 to create a Railroad Quiet Zone for Fairfield. The debate has moved on from the sometimes bitter divisions of the past over whether Fairfield should have a Quiet Zone. A recent poll on the Fairfield Iowa Facebook page showed 91% were in favor of Quiet Zone, and dissenting comments are almost never seen in the Facebook discussions or in the comments on the three Quiet Zone articles published on Fairfield Voice this year.

Public discussion now centers on what configuration of Quiet Zone is best for Fairfield, and how much it will cost. According to the Federal Railroads Administration website there are now 385 Railroad Quiet Zones in the US. Fairfield may be the first in the US created with no taxpayer funds and be entirely funded from private donations.

In the public meeting at the Fairfield Library last Sunday night, Mr. Mielke said the minimum configuration to qualify for Quiet Zone for Fairfield would involve changes to only 4 out of the present 8 crossings. This would satisfy the Federal Railroad Administration, which requires the accident risk levels to be reduced to less than the present levels with the horns sounding. He suggested the four changes could be closing 3rd St crossing; installing Supplemental Safety Measures on 2 other Streets; and closing or upgrading one other street. He recommended including 23rd St among the streets to receive safety upgrades since this crossing currently has the highest risk level of the 8 crossings in Fairfield. This is a similar solution as a city in New Jersey he’s currently working which has elected to upgrade only 6 of their total 12 crossings to create a Quiet Zone for the city.

At the other end of the scale, Mr. Mielke said, is Burlington, Iowa, which last year upgraded 6 1/2 out of their 10 crossings. They closed 2 crossings, left one unimproved and installed medians on just one side of one other crossing.

Of the various safety upgrades possible on the crossings, only one is commonly used. This involves placing a concrete median down the center of the street for 60 to 100 feet in front of each railroad crossing gate. This prevents traffic from going around the gate, which is a major cause of accidents. Although cheaper plastic wands are possible as well, these have had problems with vandalism and snowploughs. A former City Council member of Nevada Iowa, Walt MacDonald said in 2008 they installed 920 lineal feet of concrete medians (pictured above) on five crossings for a total cost $28,350, plus around $10,000 for signs and street repairs. This comes out to a total cost of under $8,000 per crossing.

The biggest accident risk reduction for the Quiet Zone is achieved by reducing the number of crossings by closing less used ones. This is why BNSF and the Iowa DoT give cash incentives to close crossings. The Fairfield Quiet Zone committee made a proposal to the City’s Transport and Safety Committee in March in which they reported that these cash grants would be $50,000 total per crossing. Andrew Mielke cautions that deals vary in each case. “The City could expect to receive at least $40,000 per crossing closing,” he said.

In 2004 the Federal Railroads Administration gave two options to the City of Fairfield to establish a Quiet Zone. Both of these options involved closing 3rd and Court St crossings. While no one has come out publicly against closing 3rd St, opinions are more divided on Court St. This has become an issue since the most recent estimates presented to the City by the Quiet Zone Committee in March indicate that Court Street is the most expensive to upgrade due to the poor condition of the road which would need to be resurfaced prior to installing medians. The total cost is estimated at $67,040. So this together with the cash incentives provided by BNSF and Iowa DoT would likely save the City over $100,000 if Court St crossing were closed. This figure could be less if the City bore some of the cost of resurfacing Court Street prior to installing medians.

At Sunday’s public meeting one Court Street resident, Peter Dollive, asked about closing Court Street. Michael Halley, the Council member tasked with heading up the Quiet Zone project responded that his enquiries with fellow Council members indicated the City would not approve this. Mr. Dollive questioned this. “If the residents on Court Street want the street closed, why would anyone want to keep it open?” he asked.

One reason often cited to keep Court Street open is that closing it would inconvenience people traveling to the square by car, on foot or by bicycle. But evidently not for the residents of Court St – so far no resident of Court St has objected to the idea of closing the crossing and many have spoken out in favor.

Since Court St is a dead end on the north end it’s hard to make the case that it is more convenient for people traveling to the city from places other the street itself. To test this, I tried driving to the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center by three different routes from the intersection of B and Kirkwood Sts. Using B St came out quickest at 1 minute 25 seconds. Court St was 6 seconds slower, and Main St came in at 20 seconds slower. Obviously it depends on traffic conditions, but since B St has a better road surface and has parking only one side of the street, it’s likely to be the fastest route most of the time.

Some say business owners around the square feel closing Court Street would inconvenience their customers. Pam and Wayne Slowick, owners of one of the larger retail businesses on Court Street disagree. “We don’t think it will have any impact at all on Thymely Solutions traffic. We think our customers drive up B and Main to cross over to Court Street,” they said.

Closing Court St achieves a significant risk reduction for the Quiet Zone as well as saving donors and the City the cost of upgrading the street. However, as Mr. Mielke points out, it is still an option to not select Court St for one of the streets to be upgraded.

Mr. Mielke expects to have a report with his recommendations ready for the City Council within a month.

This video was captured by a train enthusiast filming in Fairfield Iowa this week.

Here’s one of the many trains I saw pass through Fairfield, Iowa, on the afternoon of March 18th, 2010. This is a westbound empty BNSF coal train featuring BNSF ES44AC #6262 and Kansas City Southern SD70ACe #4037, with BNSF SD70MAC #9879 on the rear. This was the first time I’d ever seen a KCS SD70ACe on a moving train.

There’s a whole lot of noise going on about the Fairfield Quiet Zone over on the Facebook page for Fairfield, Iowa. It’s an issue that has had people on both sides of the tracks (pardon the pun) up in arms for about five years, so much so that at one point the Fairfield City Council put a ban on discussing a Quiet Zone for a period of time. Recent developments have people talking again, but there still seems to be a lot of confusion about Quiet Zones in general and what one would mean for Fairfield, so maybe we should back up a little and make sure everyone is up to speed.

First off, what is a Quiet Zone? Back in 2005, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a final rule about locomotive horns at train crossings. While the rule requires that the locomotive warning horns are sounded at all crossings, it also provides communities the chance to establish “quiet zones” by modifying the railroad crossings with safety measures that prevent people and cars from crossing the tracks when a train is coming. A 2007 study in Fremont California showed that when the Federal Railroad Administration’s Supplemental Safety Measures to create a Quiet Zone were adopted, the risk of accidents dropped by 75%-92%!

With numbers like that, it’s no surprise that cities all over the US are taking advantage of this law not only for safety’s sake but also to gain relief from train noise and increase property values for residences near the tracks. 155 Quiet Zones have already been established in Iowa’s neighbor states alone: Wisconsin has 68, Illinois has 20, Minnesota has 43, Nebraska has 2, and Missouri has 22. Iowa itself has 6 Quiet Zones in Boone, Nevada, Denison, Burlington, Le Claire and Bellevue. Marshalltown, IA has stated in their 2010 city plan that establishing a Quiet Zone is a “high priority”.

Some folks claim that they would miss the train horns as a quaint reminder of days gone by. That may be, but take into consideration that in Fairfield in the 1970’s there were less than 16 trains per day, often only sounding their horns once or twice with a long blast as they passed through town. Compare that to the increased numbers since the year 2000 – we now have up to 70 trains per day, with 20-30 required-by-law whistle blasts per train as it passes through Fairfield. This adds up to 2,100 whistle blasts per day, not to mention the horns are much louder now than in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Another concern raised by opponents to the Quiet Zone is that the City of Fairfield does not have the budget to make the necessary modifications at the railroad crossings. In November of 2007, the Fairfield City Council voted 5-1 to support a Quiet Zone subject to certain conditions, such as not using any tax revenue, and that the cost of the quiet zone would have to be raised by the community. The only exception being that the city agreed to contribute 50 percent of funds it will receive from Burlington Northern Santa Fe for the closing of the 3rd Street crossing. So the City of Fairfield will not use any money or tax revenue to establish a Quiet Zone. In fact, they would end up receiving $100,000 cash if they close both the 3rd and Main Street crossings.

Safer crossings, less noise for residents and businesses, increased property values, no money spent from the City budget or taxpayer dollars, cash back to the City from BNSF – it all sounds like a winning proposition to me. The Fairfield Train Safety and Quiet Zone Committee has reached their fund-raising goals and is ready to implement their proposed plan. All that is required now is the approval of the Fairfield City Council. What will you be telling your council members?

At 12:01 a.m. on December 25th, Burlington Iowa’s downtown area became a quiet zone. The Federal Railroad Administration granted the city quiet zone status based on measures implemented to improve safety at downtown railroad crossings.

I’d like to thank the council for taking the lead on this issues. A majority of your citizens will sleep a lot better. — John Billups of Burlington

I recall the first night I spent in Fairfield Iowa. Shortly after falling asleep I awoke to the noise and rumble of a train. The noise was so loud that I was certain the train was only a block away. I sprang out of bed with alarm, afraid that I had accidentally purchased a house sitting right next to the railroad tracks!

The next I day I learned that I did not live next to the rail road, but rather eight blocks away; with homes, trees and even a small hill between my house and the tracks. Yet the noise at times is so loud that it still have trouble getting through the night without waking.

It was with confusion that I later learned the town was torn on a plan to implement a quiet zone that would reduce the train noise. This was my first introduction to the ongoing polarization of issues in the town of Fairfield, where it seemed to be more important which side of an issue you stood on, rather than the issue itself. How else could you explain a town where half the voters were “pro” train noise?!

So now that one of our SE Iowa neighbors has implemented a quiet zone, I have to wonder if this will impact the perspectives of those in Fairfield who oppose implementing the same plan in our town? At the very least, we now have the benefit of Burlington’s experience in order to navigate the implemention of our own quiet zone, which may translate to cost savings and lessons on how to educate the community on the benefits of reducing a daily assault on the ear drums of all who live in town.

This is a significant event for the city. What a better day to give this present to the citizens of Burlington then on Christmas. — Burlington City Manager Doug Worden

I know what I want for Christmas in 2010.