City officials say they intend to silence train horns in downtown Cedar Rapids by the fall of 2012

CEDAR RAPIDS - City officials are pushing ahead with a plan to silence train horns in the downtown from the Five Seasons Hotel to the Penford Products plant at the Cedar River.

Establishing a train quiet zone will come at some significant expense, but Dave Elgin, the city's public works director, told a City Council committee this week that the goal is to silence the train horns by the time the Five Seasons Hotel, now closed for renovation, opens again in the fall of 2012.

One standard approach in creating a quiet zone is to install drop-down gates at each rail crossing.

Council member Chuck Swore, chairman of the council's Infrastructure Committee, said the council will have other options as well, one of which is to have a bell or other noisemaker at each crossing and not on the train itself.

Elgin noted that the city will hire a consultant, at an estimated cost of about $250,000, to design a quiet-zone system for the city.

One thing that a consultant needs to know, Elgin said, is if the council still has an interest in changing downtown avenues from Second to Fifth avenues SE to two-way streets from the current one-ways. Drop-down gates are different for one-ways and two-ways.

The council has talked about a quiet zone and two-way streets in the downtown for some years.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz, who began work for the city last Sept. 20, has pushed the quiet zone. No one wants to stay at an upscale hotel with train horns blasting in the middle of the night, he has said.