What Took So Long?
by Preston L. Schiller
The good news is that a train quiet zone for the south side of Bellingham, known as the “Fairhaven Quiet Zone” came into effect on March 10, 2025. (See the City of Bellingham press release below.) The bad news is that it has taken the City of Bellingham almost 20 years to succeed in attaining the quiet zone for its south side — and, while a train quiet zone is planned for the tracks in the central part of the city (Waterfront Quiet Zone), no end for its completion is in sight.
courtesy: City of Bellingham
Pedestrians waiting at a crossing in Boulevard Park that was upgraded with safety features such as flashing signals, automated crossing control gates and pedestrian exit gates.
Background
In 2005, the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), in response to the 1994 (Al) Swift Rail Act (named after our former Congressional Representative who played a major role in its enactment), announced a new rule governing the sounding and volume of locomotive train horns where streets, trails and highways cross railroad tracks at grade. A decibel level and duration of horn sounding was standardized across the country. Prior to that some trains had noise levels well above 95 decibels, a few were below this level. The patterns and durations of sounding train horns varied widely.
Our local freight train (Burlington Northern Santa Fe or BNSF) and passenger railway service (Amtrak Cascades) might have had a noise level below 95 decibels, as once the new rule went into effect, the introduction of extremely loud train horn noise was quickly noticed by all who lived with earshot of the railroad tracks. And many reacted, individual citizens and impacted businesses, holding meetings, demanding that officials address this issue by creating a train horn quiet zone along the railroad tracks within the city. FRA allowed for the establishment of quiet zones and some 2,000 across the country were grandparented in under the new rules.
Timeline
The city responded by commissioning a consultants’ study whose 2007 report identified all of the crossing issues which would need to be addressed and estimated their cost. But no action was taken until after another consultants’ report updating costs was issued in 2012. It was not until 2014 that the city engaged the issue and then began funding actions to address it in 2017. Most of the Fairhaven work was completed by the city and the port 2022, but working with BNSF, always on its own timetable, slowed implementation — which should have been completed a year ago. “Word on the street” claims that BNSF does not like quiet zones and, perhaps, this is why they seem to drag their feet in regards to the work that they must do to match jurisdictions’ efforts.
photo: Preston Schiller
Harris Avenue rail crossing demonstrates the kind of expensive safety feature that the city has had to add to several crossings to prevent cars from crossing the tracks when a train is coming.
Its completion is welcome news for Fairhaven and most of the south side of Bellingham, which has been assaulted by excessively loud train noise for years. The noise is exacerbated and amplified by the topography of the south side, which rises in a bowl-like formation from the waterfront. Such noise has many deleterious land use, environmental and health impacts — sometimes rather insidious, including sleep interruption, irritability, and even heart and hearing damage if train horns are sounded near people near the tracks such as the Fairhaven Transportation Center or Boulevard Park and trail.
For a comprehensive appraisal and bibliography of the quiet zone issue, its history — local and national — the challenges facing a jurisdiction attempting to implement one, and its many health impacts see; Schiller and Isabelle, the August 2022 issue of Whatcom Watch, “What’s With Our Train Horn Quiet Zones?” http://whatcomwatch.org/index.php/article/whats-with-our-trainhorn-quiet-zones/
Thanks — But …
So, thank you very much City of Bellingham for your work with BNSF — which must have been very frustrating at times, and completion of the Fairhaven Quiet Zone. But city officials and concerned citizens should now press for an accelerated schedule for the Waterfront Quiet Zone to give relief to the many who are affected by this unnecessary, damaging and preventable noise source. Otherwise I (and many others) will not be around to thank you 20 years from now.
_____________________________________
Preston L. Schiller, Ph.D., has been a frequent contributor to Whatcom Watch since 1997, especially on issues related to transportation and the environment. He has taught courses in transportation planning at Western Washington University, Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) and the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the principal author of “An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation: Policy, Planning and Implementation, 2nd Ed.,” 2018, Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
