Quiet zone for downtown Cedar Rapids would carry hefty price tag

CEDAR RAPIDS - City Hall is talking anew about establishing a quiet zone in the downtown by installing drop-down crossing guards at rail crossings to end the need for piercing horn blasts from freight trains.

Last week, though, a City Council committee was reminded that such a change will cost millions of dollars.

Tom Peterson, the city's new traffic engineer, estimated the cost of installing crossing guards at the downtown rail crossings at between a few million dollars to $10 million or more.

The cost will be more if the City Council decides to convert one-way avenues in the downtown to two-ways, a change the council also has been considering for a few years.

Peterson said the cost could be $500,000 at each crossing of a two-way street.

In the near term, he told the council's Infrastructure Committee that the full council will see a proposal in June to spend $370,000 for a study to find the best way to implement a quiet zone and the costs associated with it.

“(We want to) make the downtown a more livable community and that would quiet the horns,” he said. “It would have an impact on the businesses and residents as we try and develop lofts.”

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz has resurrected earlier council discussions about a downtown quiet zone, saying the city should not have train horns blaring in the middle of the night outside the Five Seasons Hotel. The city now owns the facility and is planning to to renovate so it remains an upscale hotel.

Peterson said little federal money is available to implement such a quiet zone, and it likely wouldn't be in effect until the end of 2013.