Batavia, railroad officials monitoring train noise

Trains running through eastern Batavia this month have had recorders attached to monitor when, where, how long and how loud engineers blow horns when approaching road crossings.

The move comes after residents complained to the City of Batavia, saying that the horns suddenly seem to be louder and longer along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway line, which runs through residential neighborhoods. City and railroad officials will review the data.

Batavia doesn't have much train traffic on the spur, which connects industrial areas in North Aurora, Batavia and West Chicago. The Federal Railroad Administration lists four trains a day. The one irking people is a slow-moving freight train that makes late-night deliveries. It makes one trip back and forth, crossing Kirk Road, Raddant Road, Wilson Street, Prairie Street, Webster Street, Van Buren Street, Adams Street, Laurel Street and Bond Drive. There's only 1,220 feet between the crossing at Wilson Street and the crossing at Laurel Street.

"One of the issues is the train is so slow," said Bill McGrath, Batavia's city administrator.

McGrath said he also suspects, although he has no proof, that engineers may have gone easy on Batavia after federal rules requiring horns to be sounded were implemented in 2005, but that there now may be a crew operating that sticks strictly to the rules. Those rules call for five blasts of the horn - at a minimum 96 decibels - when a train is 15 to 20 seconds away from a crossing. (For comparison, an unmuffled diesel truck 50 feet away runs from 90 to 100 decibels, and a siren 50 feet away from 100 to 110. Normal human speech runs 60 to 70, and a blender runs from 70 to 80 decibels.)

The city has not received any petitions, but has gotten phone calls from residents, McGrath said.

There have been six train crashes in Batavia in the last 32 years. In five of them, a vehicle hit the train; in the sixth, the train hit the vehicle. In all cases, the trains were traveling 20 mph or slower.

If it turns out the train engineers are sounding the horns properly, Batavia could pursue designation as a "quiet zone." That usually requires making changes to crossings, such as installing flashing lights and four-quadrant or partial gates, and medians that prevent people from driving around partial gates. Quiet zones must be a minimum of a half-mile in length.

Elburn has applied to become a quiet zone, and is installing an automated wayside horn system to do so. The system is designed to focus the sound on vehicles at the intersection, so the sound travels a shorter distance. However, such systems are only allowed at gated crossings, and it is costing Elburn about $300,000 to install it at two crossings. The only Batavia crossings with gates are on Kirk and Raddant roads.

Four-quadrant gate systems can cost $300,000 to $500,000 per crossing.