------ Forwarded Message
From: Bill Blackmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 14:12:06 -0500
To: <"Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@spamarrest.com>
Subject: Fairfield Railroad Citizen's Action Committee/Quiet Train Initiative
Greetings. I would not blame anyone on this list if they thought the whole matter had been dropped and forgotten about. This has happened before with quiet train initiatives in Ff., and one of my main goals is that this does not happen again. Although I have been out of town constantly, I believe I have made some progress that will lead towards determining the best combination of RR crossing solutions for Ff. so we can have a city wide quiet zone.
I am suggesting that this group be renamed the Fairfield Railroad Citizen's Action Committee. There is going to be a lot of work to do, and I think a formal title that describes our goal will be useful in defining the group's mission. Within this group I believe we will need some version of the following subgroups:
- Fund raising. Personally I don't see the City of Ff. paying for a quiet zone. So we will need to raise at least part if not all the cost. I have checked and no specific sources of funding are available for the establishment of quiet zones.
- BNSF liason. We will need to work closely with the RR and enlist its support.
- Community consensus. We not only need individuals who support a quiet zone, but businesses. My feeling is that the City will be much more responsive if businesses that contribute to the community as employers, members of the Chamber of Commerce, etc. support this effort. It goes without saying that this consensus needs to be broad based. Therefore we will need people to work enlisting the support of both meditator-owned businesses and those that have no MUM/TSR afiliation. The QT mailing list has 352 names on it, and I would bet that less than 5% are not somehow associated with the TM movement.
- City Council. Once we have figured out a solution and its cost, we will need to very carefully contact each member of the City Council, explain ourselves, listen carefully to their feedback, and ask for their support. Notwithstanding the fact that I think this project will have to be privately funded, we need to get all the support we can from the City Council and the City.
- Legal. I have had some very useful discussions with lawyers in Fairfield, and we have discussed how different sorts of legal action might support our overall effort. Again, the goal is not to pick a fight with either BNSF or the City, but we very well may need to take some initial legal actions to get the ball rolling.
FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION (FRA)-I spoke last week to the FRA employee in charge of RR crossings for Iowa and several other midwestern states. He is familiar with Ff., having been here for other discussions of how Ff. can reduce train noise. He told me he thought Ff. was a good candidate for median strips, one of the approved Supplemental Safety Measures (SSMs). The great thing about median strips is that they are very effective, and are by far the least expensive solution to crossing safety. The big question is whether or not our streets are wide enough to allow for the installation of median strips. Median strips, also known as "channelization devices" are installed in the middle of streets on both sides of a crossing for a length of 60' to 100' from the crossing guard. They keep motorists from driving into the other lane and then driving around the crossing guards. A stiff fine and good law enforcement complement the medians.
Transportation Engineering Assessment Program (TEAP). Several years ago Ff. received funding from the Iowa Dept. of Transportation to conduct a TEAP study. It was completed but not acted upon in any concrete way. The gentleman I spoke to at the FRA suggested that the first step for us is to get a copy of this study and get very familiar with it. I hope to have a copy in the next few days.
Nevada, Iowa-Nevada is a small town east of Ames that has both a north south RR line and an east west one. Union Pacific runs about 70 trains per day through Nevada on one of these lines. Nevada now has median strips installed on their crossings and things are going well based on my conversation with the City Council member who headed up this effort. He told me "I started out as a committee of one", but he persisted and got things done. He has been contacted by other towns in Iowa that want quiet zones, amongst them Tama. Nevada shows that you can create a quiet zone without spending millions of dollars. This gentleman indicated that time permitting, he would consider coming to Ff. to meet with our group to discuss his experiences in this regard. I will be working in western Iowa for the next couple of weeks and I hope I can arrange to meet this guy and see what they have done in Nevada.
Wayside Horns-I still believe these horns will be a likely part of an overall solution for Ff. We may need to use them on crossings where the street is too narrow to allow for medians. There is only one manufacturer of these horns in the US, and they are quite expensive. Go to http://www.railroadcontrols.com/ahs/ to see the system. If we cannot do medians on some crossings, these horns would be an enormous improvement. Since I live a block from the tracks, and have seen these horns in action, I would MUCH rather have them than the current level of horn noise from D St. on the east to 23rd. St. on the west end of town.
I hope this information has been useful. You always have the option of skimming or skipping over things if you haven't the time or inclination to read all the details. However, all these details are important, since the only way we will win the City's cooperation is by knowing a lot more about train noise solutions than they do. Regards, Bill Blackmore
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