Portland-Milwaulkie Light Rail Conceptual Design Report – index to the full report

View the Conceptual Design Report

Clinton Street, Rhine Street and Holgate Boulevard station areas

System Elements and Preliminary Engineering Recommendations

- see page 8 and 9, Quiet Zone

Feel free to attend a Light Rail Open House to learn more about plans for your neighborhood, and to thank TriMet and City stakeholders for taking our concerns to heart. The meeting notices are in the calendar to the left of this post.

Thanks to the Hosford Abernethy Neighborhood Association for this update.

Title: TriMet Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Open House

Therefore, this would be a good event to attend if you are able. Please feel free to forward this announcement, or to bring other concerned neighbors with you.

You may have seen complaints from Tigard and Tualatin neighbors about the new train horn noise from Tri-Met’s WES commuter rail line. SE Corridor trains would run much more often, as well as all night long (a train each way every 15 minutes in the day, and every 30 minutes at night, or 170 trains a day). TriMet may propose quieter horns (reducing them from the 110 decibels of Union Pacific Trains to the 96 decibels used by WES), which will not help nearby neighbors.

Message points:

• We cannot tolerate any additional train horn noise;

• Nothing short of an approved Quiet Zone can assure that result;

• TriMet should do whatever is necessary to assure that light rail is a healthy addition to our community and preserves neighborhood livability.

Start Time: 17:30
Date: 2009-03-10
End Time: 19:30

Tualatin policymakers hope to use federal stimulus money as part of a new and cheaper plan to eventually end the use of train horns by TriMet’s Westside Express Service.

City officials now say they can create a citywide quiet zone for about $2.5 million, half the original budget-busting price tag. But the lower cost comes with fewer safety enhancements, and the horns probably would continue blowing for another two years until improvements are made.

“I’m really cautiously optimistic,” said Tualatin City Manager Sherilyn Lombos.
Unlike TriMet’s light-rail system, the 14.7-mile commuter-rail project travels a freight line and is required to sound horns four times at each public crossing.

Since service began Feb. 2, Tualatin is being rattled by as many as 1,280 weekday warnings of at least 96 decibels a blast.

Officials considered safety measures at nine of 10 city crossings to create quiet zones. But leaders now say they can do a cheaper version, making median and four-quadrant gate improvements at only four crossings, while still complying with federal regulations for quiet zones, eliminating the need for horns.

“I’m thrilled,” Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden said.

Even if Tualatin moved forward with its plan today, the lengthy review and construction process means a quiet zone is probably 18 months to two years away, said Dave Lanning of the Oregon Department of Transportation Rail Division.

Although preliminary, the plan would tap as much as $1.3 million from the city’s urban renewal fund. Tualatin will receive another $700,000 of federal stimulus money through Washington County.

“We all sympathize with the city of Tualatin,” said Anne Madden, a county transportation spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, TriMet is considering a $250,000 contribution from its share of federal stimulus funds. The transit agency had anticipated using the money for wayside horns at WES crossings — thought to be less intrusive than the train horns.

The possibility of quiet zones is bittersweet for residents who live near crossings in Tualatin.

Erin Stadick, a regular at City Council meetings, said he is encouraged but said the ongoing horn blasts will make for a long two years.

“I believe that due to pressure, they now realize that they have to do something,” Stadick said. “I don’t think it should have ever gotten to this point.”

Brad Schmidt: 503-294-5199; bradschmidt@news.oregonian.com

A rude awakening for Tualatin, and for TriMet
by Editorial Board, The Oregonian
Monday February 16, 2009

The Westside Express Service is a welcome addition
to the region, but the noise problem can’t be shrugged off

In hindsight, Chris Barhyte wonders if they should have rented a freight train.

That sounds extreme, but Barhyte is a Tualatin city councilman. In the two weeks since the Westside Express Service started running, he’s been asking himself how the city could have fully anticipated — or simulated — the noise WES would inflict on the city.

The city’s leaders were, and are, excited about the commuter rail line’s transportation benefits. Yet Barhyte also understands why many along the WES tracks don’t see it — or hear it — that way.

Frequent horn blasts, beginning at 5:45 a.m. each workday, may or may not have diminished property values, as some fear. But the 1,280 horn blasts a day in the Tualatin area have shattered equanimity. People are looking to the city for answers, and the city has one — but it doesn’t have the money to pay for it.

TriMet doesn’t either, really. But TriMet does need to take the lead in solving “Tualatin’s” problem. Otherwise, WES will not only be the first commuter rail line in Oregon.

WES will also be the last.

Unlike the MAX light-rail system, which runs fairly quietly in accordance with federal transit rules, WES operates under federal freight rules, requiring four horn blasts for safety at every public crossing. There are 25 such crossings along the rail line, and WES runs 32 times a day.

Multiply that out and it means a horn is now blasting 3,000 times more than before. The freight train horns that went through before (and still go by, on the same tracks) registered in the distance as a “kind of neat anomaly,” as Barhyte put it Friday.

They were tolerable, even pleasant for some. But the decibel levels now make people bellow, “Stop!”

In the long run, this is a problem that could put the brakes on hopes of expanding the commuter rail line in this state. Other city leaders are watching, and they’re very concerned.

Forest Grove Mayor Richard Kidd, for instance, is a strong transit advocate who hopes to bring a light-rail line to Forest Grove some day. But he said Friday that TriMet must investigate the true extent of the noise problem WES has inflicted.

Part of the problem, right now, of course, is the novelty of the interruption. There’s a chance the noise will fade into the background, at least for some people along the route. But for those closest to the track, that isn’t likely. And it’s not enough just to say, “Oh well, it’s only a few people.”

As Kidd put it Friday, “Just a few people are my constituents.” (Forest Grove has 19,565 people to Tualatin’s 25,465.)

Putting safety equipment at the Tualatin crossings to establish “quiet zones” is the answer. But it would cost somewhere between $4 million and $5 million, which Tualatin can’t afford.

The city has hopes of obtaining some money from the federal stimulus package. And the prospects were looking good on Friday, Tualatin officials said.

We hope the money comes through, but even if it does, it would be a big mistake for TriMet to write this off as Tualatin’s headache.

This is a stopper for commuter rail. TriMet shouldn’t be the caboose — it should be at the front of the train in coming up with answers.