Petaluma explores quiet zones at rail crossings

It starts before dawn, the 100-decible train horn that is as loud as a jackhammer blaring just feet from Jennifer Cho’s Payran Street house.

Cho and her husband, Mark Wallace, both musicians with the San Francisco Opera, are used to working nights and sleeping late. But ever since the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit system began testing trains along the tracks in Petaluma, sleeping in has become impossible.

“They really lay on the horn,” said Cho, who bought the house with her husband three years ago. “It may cause us to move.”

The mother of a three-year-old son said that she has been following the city’s effort to implement so-called quiet zones - rail crossings where the conductor would not be required to blow the horn.

“That would be huge,” she said.

Others in Petaluma, who have been jarred by the train noise, feel the same way. About 40 residents turned out Monday for a Petaluma City Council workshop on establishing quiet zones, as SMART readies to launch commuter rail service from Santa Rosa to San Rafael with 30 trains per day as early as December.

Several Petaluma residents, who have complained in recent months about the noise of the trains at the city’s eight road crossings during the testing period, testified Monday that train noise has shocked pets, rattled walls and windows and created sleep problems for those who work at night and sleep during the day.

“Nobody should have to put up with this noise,” said Petaluma resident Bob Ulmer, who lives near the McDowell Boulevard train crossing.

Ulmer presented the council with a petition in support of quiet zones signed by 450 residents.

But whatever the city does about the noise, they should not call the crossings “quiet zones,” according to Federal Railroad Administration official LeeAnn Dickson.

“That is the absolute worst thing they could have called this thing,” said Dickson. “A better name would be ‘no regular use of the train horn zone.’”

Dickson cautioned the city council that noise levels at crossings might not improve in a way anticipated by implementing quiet zones.

“It is not quiet,” said Dickson, who noted that the policy does not remove horns from the trains, nor does it forbid the use of horns by the train engineers.

She said a quiet zone policy does not remove all other bells, whistles, lights and sounds when a train comes through a crossing. She also said the train will still use its horn when leaving a train station.

“It is the engineers’ sole judgment. It’s their job,” Dickson said, adding that engineers can be criminally liable and sued if they do not use the train horns and an accident happens.

Dickson said all eight crossings in the city would qualify for quiet zone designations, since they currently meet the federal guidelines.

Dan St. John, Petaluma’s Director of Public Works and Utilities, noted that SMART has already installed extra safety measures, including four-quadrant gate systems, road medians and other traffic-channeling measures, flashing lights, bells, automatic gates, power outage indicators and constant warning time devices.

“SMART has constructed these devices at all public grade crossings throughout the entire Sonoma-Marin rail corridor, including the city limits of Petaluma,” St. John wrote in his report to the council. “Each measure is designed to prevent vehicles, bikes and pedestrians from going around lowered gates at crossings, which is a common cause of grade crossing incidents.”

Petaluma city attorney Eric Danly told the council that with the safety features installed, the risk of accidents was lower then without the quiet zone designation.

“It will be less dangerous,” said Danly.

The city’s liability if an accident were to occur within a quiet zone was a top concern of council members. But Danly told the council that a quiet zone policy would not increase liability to the city.

The city council indicated that it would support proceeding with plans to create the quiet zone policy and apply for the status from the Federal Railroad Administration. But, as Petaluma city engineer Curt Bates told the council, the process of implementing quiet zones could take up to six months to be implemented once the formal application process starts.

The earliest this could happen would be at the next city council meeting on Oct. 17, meaning residents will be subjected to train horns for at least the next several months.

(Matt Brown contributed to this report.)