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they changed this in southern california for the surfliner and it was a huge impact. really nice to not hear the train horn. then they added speakers that play
by foolfoolz 2y ago
they changed this in southern california for the surfliner and it was a huge impact. really nice to not hear the train horn. then they added speakers that play fake train sounds at grade crossings… why
- astrange 2y agoIt's a federal requirement. The real solution would be not to have grade crossings, but America is generally incapable of building anything.
- browningstreet 2y agoReno put their downtown train track underground. It’s a short segment but it’s doable. Emeryville has no horn train crossings. It’s doable.
- mike_d 2y agoOne of the few good things to come out of the next four years is that California will be able to basically ignore any federal requirements that serve no real purpose.
- cuteboy19 2y agothankfully california has more than enough supply of those. cities like san francisco have proven reserves that will last decades on their own
- faggotbreath 2y ago[dead]
- astrange 2y agoThey're not going to ignore the railroad regulators. (Also, Congress is going to flip in two years. The only constant in US politics is that voters get bored of whoever's in power and vote against them in the midterms.)
- denkmoon 2y agoThe requirement is a bit garbage. Most other countries manage to run their rail networks effectively without having their trains blast the horn at every crossing. When they do, it's typically two short tones, not the way the US does it.
- fragmede 2y ago> America is generally incapable of building anything. I mean, sure. But this very article is about having built (erected?) electricity poles for those trains to run on.
- astrange 2y agoIt got delayed like three years because the tiny billionaire suburb Atherton filed a fake environmental protection lawsuit against it.
- treflop 2y agoI see people take photos on the train tracks all the time and trains are pretty silent. There would be a lot more dead.
- GavinMcG 2y agoMaking horns non-mandatory at crossings wouldn’t prevent the engineer from using it when appropriate.
- Symbiote 2y agoHere's over an hour of recordings of level crossings (railroad crossings) in the UK. I've obviously only watched a couple of minutes, but there are no train horns. There's a mixture of urban and rural locations. https://youtu.be/9FoeIxfYW20?t=122&feature=shared https://youtu.be/9FoeIxfYW20?t=122&feature=shared
- ghaff 2y agoFor pedestrian crossings at least, I did a long distance walk in England where there was signage at a couple crossings to the effect of look, listen, and be aware. On other walks, there was a phone you were supposed to use (I did) to call an operations center to get a go ahead to cross.
- sschueller 2y agoOther countries have changed laws requiring all crossings be gated and or have signalling. The cheap solution is to blow the horn. Switzerland took 20 years to update most of its 4440 train crossings to meet federal requirements. 97% meet this standard as of today. The reason for the upgrade was not to reduce the annoyance of horns but to save lives which it does.
- saagarjha 2y agoAll road crossings along the Caltrain route have both gates and signals. I think all pedestrian ones do too now (they have largely blocked off the at-grade ones).
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoAt Del Mar crossing because you can’t see or hear anything from behind the curve. Clever solve.