Appleton has no plans for railroad quiet zone along Newberry Street due to high cost of safety features
Reader question: I thought I heard years ago that the Newberry railroad crossing in Appleton was getting safety gates to stop the train whistles to help quiet the residential area. Any word on what the city and Canadian National are planning?
Answer: Appleton has no plans to establish a railroad quiet zone for the track that crosses East Newberry Street. The improvements necessary for a quiet zone would cost city taxpayers millions of dollars.
Appleton's existing railroad quiet zone, in effect since 2019, pertains only to the mainline track running diagonally through the city. It doesn't apply to secondary tracks like the one along Newberry.
Quiet zones are regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration. Every crossing within a quiet zone must have warning lights, gates and constant warning time circuitry, which accounts for the speed of a train to determine when the gates come down.
Appleton city traffic engineer Eric Lom said the crossings along the mainline track had those safety features in place, so it was relatively inexpensive to establish that quiet zone.
"On these secondary lines, you would be spending like a half million dollars per crossing to get it up to the basic standards," Lom said. "The city has not entertained that at this point."
The secondary track along Newberry has about 12 crossings east of Memorial Drive.
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Canadian National Railway sold 900 miles of track, including the line crossing Newberry, to Watco in March 2021. Rail activity has increased since then, Lom said, based on the number of noise complaints the city has received.
"It's starting to spur a lot of phone calls from people who are saying, 'I thought this was a quiet zone because I never heard any whistles,' when in fact it never was a quiet zone," Lom said. "There just weren't any trains."
Federal law requires train operators to begin to sound a horn 15 to 20 seconds in advance of all public grade crossings. The noise alerts people in cross traffic that a train is coming but also can disrupt neighborhood peace.
A quiet zone is an exemption to the law. Train operators don't routinely sound a horn in a quiet zone, though they still could do so in an emergency.
Post-Crescent reporter Duke Behnke answers your questions about local government. Send questions to dbehnke@gannett.com or call him at 920-993-7176.
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This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Appleton has no plans for railroad quiet zone along Newberry Street
