Enough with the train horns in downtown Cedar Rapids, says City Manager Pomeranz

CEDAR RAPIDS - Horns blasting from freight trains in the downtown are on City Manager Jeff Pomeranz's hit list.

Pomeranz told the City Council's Infrastructure Committee on Tuesday that the city is in the process of hiring an outside engineering firm for advice on what it will take to improve downtown rail crossings so freight trains operating downtown don't need to use their horns.

Silencing the horns long has been on the City Hall and Downtown District priority lists.

Most recently, in 2007, a city staff engineer told the City Council that it could cost $250,000 at each rail crossing through the downtown to install crossing gates so train engineers wouldn't be required to blast train horns.

The horns have been of particular annoyance to some patrons at the Five Seasons Hotel, which sits next to the downtown tracks.

Pomeranz told the committee on Tuesday that the city needs to “make sure we protect” the hotel now that the city owns it and intends to see that it gets renovated at a cost of $20 million or more.

Hotel patrons aren't going to want to pay rates at an upgraded hotel with train horns blaring outside, he suggested.

“We're getting serious about this issue,” he told the committee.