Cedar Rapids to take on changes to downtown rail crossings

CEDAR RAPIDS - All isn't going to be quiet on the Fourth Street rail track in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Even so, the City Council this week took a next step in a more-than-decade-long discussion to do what it can to quiet horns from trains that crawl through downtown, or those that stop and retreat as train engineers switch cars at a nearby rail yard.

In this week's action, the council approved an agreement with the Union Pacific Railroad to pay the railroad up to $28,000 for preliminary engineering work to change warning lights at the rail crossings at Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth avenues SE to allow those one-way streets to become two-way ones.

Rob Davis, an engineer in the city's Public Works Department, said this week that the City Council priority is to change the one-ways to two-ways in the downtown, but the plan for the signal crossings also is to install closing gates at the streets, which is a required prelude to the creation of a partial quiet zone for trains in the downtown.

Davis estimated that the changes at the four rail crossings will cost the city between $150,000 and $250,000 at each crossing, an amount that has put the conversion from one-ways to two-ways on hold over the last decade.

It could take a year or two to make the changes at the four crossings to accommodate two-way vehicle traffic, and the timeline is dependent on the railroad's schedule, Davis said.

He said a longer-term plan to create a partial quiet zone on the Fourth Street rail corridor through downtown could cost $10 million.

Davis said the federal requirement for a partial quiet zone requires crossing gates at every crossing for one-half mile as well as for an additional one-quarter mile on each side of the zone. This would require the installation of crossing gates at Stickle Drive NE, First Avenue East as well as Sixth, Seventh and Eighth avenues SE in addition to gates that will be installed first at Second through Fifth avenues SE. The plan also calls for new stop lights on First Avenue East at the tracks to accommodate pedestrians, he said.

Davis said the partial quiet zone would allow engineers of through trains to travel from the Cedar River by the Penford Products plant through downtown without sounding a horn. Those trains typically operate from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., so those living downtown or staying at DoubleTree by Hilton at night wouldn't be disturbed by horns, he said.

However, he said trains that use the Fourth Street track to switch cars in the downtown during other hours are required to sound horns each time they change direction. The cost to move the rail yard switches and other infrastructure could cost $250 million to create a complete quiet zone, Davis said.

In recent years, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz initiated a new discussion about a downtown quiet zone after he had stayed at the downtown hotel before his introduction to the public as city manager in 2010. By May 2011, Pomeranz said the city, which was in the midst of flood recovery, would put its study of a quiet zone aside for the time being because of the cost.