Ban train horns? Quiet zones in best interest of Brightline, Vero Beach, FEC, Sebastian?

If you’re like Kathy Davis, you’re fed up with dozens of trains blaring their horns as they barrel through Indian River County night and day.

“It’s just a constant, unsettling, unpeaceful sort of grating noise,” said Davis, who lives east of U.S. 1 in the Antilles, maybe a half-mile from the railroad tracks. “I didn’t realize it was going to be so awful.”

It was one thing when just freight trains rolled for the more than two years she lived in the neighborhood, having moved from Orchid Island. But when Brightline started running 32 trains a day last year, Davis did her homework.

Doesn't Indian River County already ban train horns?

Take the poll: Should Indian River, Martin, St. Lucie counties silence Brightline, FEC horns?

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As of November: Will quiet zones silence Brightline train horns here? Not for at least a year, if ever

She found an Indian River County ordinance prohibiting train horns from sounding 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

“If this ordinance is the law, then I think it is time to make the community aware … (and it is) time to implement the law at upgraded crossings,” she wrote in an email to TCPalm after emailing the county. “ … as I am sleepless in Vero Beach.”

While the county ordinance is on the books, it is not enforceable as is, based on what I read in Press Journal archives and what Erik Ferguson, the county’s traffic engineer, suggested at a recent meeting of a Metropolitan Planning Organization committee.

That could start to change Tuesday, as commissioners are scheduled to discuss a potential option to have quiet zones based on federal regulations, passed in 2005, Ferguson said he thinks the county is close to meeting. In November, the three Treasure Coast counties told TCPalm they'd take a wait-and-see approach.

Press Journal and TCPalm archives show an effort to create nighttime quiet zones dates to at least 1980, when a Vero Beach safety and noise abatement committee recommended the city council ban horns except at railroad crossings that had no gates or alarms.

For the next decade-plus, the horn issue dominated Press Journal headlines and letters to the editor, as Jack Graham, a Vista Royale resident, led the push for nighttime bans.

FEC cited balance or residential, business rights

History behind federal rule: The Federal Railroad Administration timeline on the history of train horn rules

In 1986, Indian River County banned train horns overnight (while Vero Beach and Sebastian insisted they wanted horns for safety). In 1987, the Press Journal reported the Florida East Coast Railway threatened to intentionally violate the law, then take the county to court.

That apparently didn’t happen, and the county didn’t flinch when an FEC attorney asked commissioners to rescind the ordinance Oct. 23, 1990.

“Obviously, this commission has to balance the rights of those who live along the tracks with the rights of the railroad,” said the attorney, Robert Abood.

Back then, the county had only four train accidents, including two fatalities, over four years.

But by late 1991, the Federal Railroad Administration issued an emergency order outlawing late-night bans on 500 crossings statewide. The administration cited a near tripling of accidents over the previous 18 months.

So Indian River County’s ordinance went dormant. It probably was a wise decision. Train horns ― 118 decibels, TCPalm staff measured in October ― are loud enough to give people several railroad crossings away an idea of where trains are. Who knows how many people were dissuaded from driving around gates because of the sound?

That might be less of an argument nowadays since Brightline, running up to 110 mph in the county, has installed quad gates designed to stop people from walking and driving around.

Train horns don't bother everyone, but ...

I like the train horns, though I live about 3 miles away and hear them from time to time. Years ago, I lived in Vista Royale, but quickly got used to them.

Now, as a motorist, I find them useful, a hint as to where traffic will have to stop because a train is coming. It gives me an opportunity to change routes.

By my bed is not as close as Davis’ is, so I can see why she doesn't appreciate an additional 32 trains a day.

Mike Capps is closer to the tracks than Davis, or most anyone else. He lives in the first house south of the St. Sebastian River railroad bridge in Indian River County.

“I knew what I was buying into, so I can’t cry about it,” he told TCPalm’s Laurie Blandford, noting he began to notice the horns when Brightline began. “It’s just the horn. The trains don’t bother me a bit.”

Cheryl Klinke, who lives near railroad tracks in Jensen Beach, told Blandford she can’t enjoy her fenced-in backyard given the increase in blasts.

How would trains horns affect safety?

“(Brightline trains are) fast and they’re short, which is great, but they blow their horns like crazy,” she said, adding she understands why trains blow their horns. “People are so stupid. People are oblivious.”

Will the rails be safe enough if engineers are prohibited from blowing their horns 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.?

I started to think so after re-reading a 2016 column by TCPalm's Rich Campbell. He touted a 2014 Federal Railroad Administration study analyzing 203 quiet zones — covering 903 rail crossings — established from May 2005 to April 2011.

"Conclusion: The study found 'no significant difference in collisions before and after the establishment of quiet zones,'" Campbell said.

Plus, when I began writing this column, there hadn't been significant Brightline-related safety issues in Indian River County.

Until Monday night. That's when the first Brightline-related fatality in the county occurred, when a train struck a man walking down the tracks.

In August 2023, a month before Brightline service through the Treasure Coast began, Sheriff Eric Flowers predicted the county would see its first fatality before Christmas 2023. He was off only by a month.

It turns out a horn wasn’t enough to get the 29-year-old off the tracks shortly before 10 p.m. Monday, Brightline officials told the sheriff’s office.

Would keeping the horns save lives?

Is it worth the risk to silence them and give folks like Davis her sleep back?

Those are key questions commissioners will have to tackle at 9 a.m. Tuesday in their chambers.

This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.

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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Indian River Co. not enforcing overnight train-horn ban, but will it?