Noise assault of trains
Published: Thursday, Apr 24, 2008


EDITOR: I attended the March 29 SMART train debate and take strong exception with Alfred Bulf’s conclusions (letter published in your April 17 edition). It’s fine for him to praise SMART. He lives in Sacramento and won’t have to bear the horrendous cost of those trains.

What cost? Far greater than the half-billion dollar price tag will be the noise that train air horns inflict on Sonoma County residents and property owners.

SMART plans 28 daily trains. NCRA plans 16 freight trains (both are their numbers). Saying “yes” to SMART pushes many of those freight trains into nighttime runs. That’s 44 trains a day — almost one every half hour — all day and all night. Each train must, by federal law, blast its air horn three times approaching each of the 61 road crossing in Sonoma County. That’s over 7,000 air horn blasts each day — almost 300 each and every hour, and each at between 120 and 144 decibels, about the same deafening screech as being 25 meters from a jet engine at full blast.

The train line runs straight up the densely populated spine of our county where this racket will have the greatest impact. At 120 feet, the train horn will be as loud as having a chain saw fired up four feet from your ear. At three-eighths of a mile, train horns are as loud as having a telephone dial tone on high jammed against your ear. Not offensive in the afternoon, but unacceptable at 2 a.m. At three-fourths of a mile, sound engineers say that the horn blasts will still be loud enough to disturb sleep for most people.

Check it out on a map. There are well over 100,000 of us (including many in Petaluma) living along that corridor and who will suffer from this noise assault so that 1,850 Sonoma County residents (that number comes from SMART’s own projections) can ride a train instead of taking Golden Gate Transit buses that are already available, quiet and running along the same corridor that SMART will use.

Even worse, SMART asks us to swallow its devastating racket when, by its own forecasts, SMART will not significantly reduce 101 commuter traffic jams. Three freight trains a day (pre-2000 levels) was fine. The never-ending din of 44 trains is not — especially when it won’t solve 101