From Staff Reports

Advocates of train-horn “quiet zones” argued last Thursday that limiting the use of the horns would make some areas along the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers more appealing to developers and investors.

At a forum at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, about 30 residents and officials from RiverLink discussed the possibility of establishing no-horn zones along much of the riverbanks in Asheville.

Developer Regina Trantham said that bankers are less likely to finance construction of homes near railroad tracks because of fears that such homes may be difficult to sell.

Under federal law, trains are required to sound their horns before reaching public crossings.

However, a process set up in 2005 allows municipalities to establish railroad quiet zones within which this requirement does not apply. In such cases, the local governments establishing the zones generally are required to pay for the additional costs necessitated by the change.

In Asheville, there are nine railroad crossings from Oakley to the edge of Woodfin.

Thomas Drake, grade-crossing manager for the Federal Railroad Administration’s Southeast region, said that the costs of establishing the zones can vary greatly.

Some methods, such as closing roads or putting raised medians at crossings to keep motorists from driving around the gates, can be realtively cheap, he said.

But more elaborate methods, such as special gates that close all four lanes of a road ,can be as expensive as $300,000.
Meanwhile, the rules would not prevent engineers from using the horns to communicate with workers in the Norfolk

Southern switching yard, which lies in the middle of the proposed zone.

However, consultant Ed Harris said that by opening up additional areas that could be developed for housing, the quiet zones would save money on the costs of building new pipes and roads to the suburbs that would otherwise be developed.

RiverLink is seeking funding from City Council to study how a quiet zone could be established and how much it would cost, according to the nonprofit’s executive director, Karen Cragnolin.