Woman crusades for ‘quiet zone’ to derail train noise

SECURITY - For more than a decade, Fran Smith lived in peace and relative quiet in a neighborhood a block from the railroad tracks.

Sure she heard the trains — they blow their horns whenever they approach two nearby crossings — but it wasn’t an issue.

Until now. In the past few years, something has changed. So much so that Smith is leading an effort to silence the trains that cross Main Street in Security and Fontaine Boulevard in Widefield — two unincorporated suburbs in El Paso County.

She said many of her neighbors have rallied around her.

“I’ve lived here since 1991, and they weren’t as bad as they are now,” Smith said.

She blames a combination of factors. The trains are more frequent — as many as 37 a day between the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad. Their horns are louder and more obnoxious, and sometimes it’s whoever has their hand on the horn.

“Sometimes a train goes through and honks once,” she said. “The next train will honk five or six times. There is no standard.”

She said federal rules dictating a precise series of short and long blasts as trains approach crossings generally are ignored.

It’s gotten so bad Smith can’t sleep at night.

She was inspired to seek a federally designated “quiet zone” after reading news of a similar effort in Colorado Springs to take advantage of new federal rules that allow trains to run silently through towns if crossings are upgraded with gates, medians, flashing lights and sensors to tell engineers the safety devices are in operation.

Smith wrote the railroads, contacted officials in the Springs and appealed to the county to intervene. She found an ally in Dennis Hisey, El Paso County commissioner.

“We’ve got 10,000 people living within a half-mile of those two crossings,” Hisey said. “A lot of people are having trouble sleeping.”

He should know because he lives about a mile from the tracks and hears them coming and going.

Hisey said he’s gotten many calls and complaints about the trains since a Side Streets story in January about efforts in Colorado Springs to muffle the trains rolling past the Mill Street neighborhood.

Hisey said he conducted a listening tour of neighborhoods near the tracks and was shocked at just how loud the trains can be.

“If you are inside a house in winter, with the windows closed and you are watching TV, you absolutely lose whatever they are saying until the train passes,” Hisey said.

Luckily for Security-Widefield residents, the state upgraded the two crossings when U.S. 85-87 was improved a couple years ago. Hisey thinks the county needs only a few more sensors installed to complete the upgrades.

He’ll find out for sure in a couple weeks when officials of the BNSF Railway arrive to inspect the crossings. Union Pacific officials also must inspect the crossings to assure compliance with federal regulations. Then, possibly, a quiet zone can be enacted.

“If it takes an act of Congress, then let’s do it,” Smith said. “I love my home and my neighborhood. I don’t want to move. And I won’t, until I’m told they can’t solve it.”

Tell me about your neighborhood: 636-0193 or bill.vogrin@gazette.com