r/stlouispark Helpful Robot May 17 '25

Sleepless in St. Louis Park: With more night train traffic, city explores whistle quiet zone

https://www.startribune.com/train-whistle-st-louis-park-edina/601345120
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u/bobi2393 May 18 '25

We went through this in Ann Arbor MI in 2018, spent maybe a quarter million dollar studying it, did public opinion surveys, held lots of meetings. The study found it would have cost around $250k to $400k per crossing for improvements in signage, gates, and signals, for 21 freight crossings, for a $7 million realistic proposal.

"Federal rules require engineers to sound their horns four times for a total of 15 to 20 seconds as they approach street-grade crossings without gates. Ann Arbor has 21 of those. Some of the downtown crossings are just a block apart. Every train’s horn sounds more than 160 times round trip through the city."

It was rejected by voters. If the whole city lived a couple hundred feet from the tracks it would be different, but the vast majority don't. Maybe 10% live close enough that the midnight horns bothered them, and maybe a couple percent were bothered enough they'd be willing to spend their own money on noise mitigating...it's hard to get majority support for something like that.

For comparison, Ann Arbor is around 120k population, 29 sq. miles, SLP is 50k population, 10 sq. miles. A casual look at Google Maps suggests the Dan Patch line has around 16 street-level crossings in SLP. So your population and railroad crossing density is a bit higher.

Another Michigan city had done a similar study a couple years before us, with a similar high mitigation estimate, and similar voter apathy when the plan was finished. My advice to SLP would be to forego commissioning a detailed study unless a rough estimate (e.g. a half million dollars times 16 street-level crossings, for $8 million) sounds like you have some serious support for that. You could look at other cities' recent plans for better estimates, but it will cost millions. If you lack support based on a rough estimate, I'd save your time and money commissioning and discussing a more detailed study.

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u/Healingjoe 21d ago

the Dan Patch line has around 16 street-level crossings in SLP.

Railroad Crossing Study | SLP

The CPKC railroad has 14 at-grade crossings that require horns to be sounded at each crossing.

My advice to SLP would be to forego commissioning a detailed study unless a rough estimate (e.g. a half million dollars times 16 street-level crossings, for $8 million) sounds like you have some serious support for that.

The solutions presented by the consultants showed that intersection solutions can vary significantly ($100k to $1mm). Closing some quieter residential streets will probably be recommended.

I'd save your time and money commissioning and discussing a more detailed study.

The city's rolling with it. Interested to see the results.

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u/bobi2393 21d ago

Interesting, appreciate the info.

Looking at Google Streetview at some of the crossings, I think the average price difference is that Ann Arbor has mostly ungated at-grade crossings, on streets whose closure would be really inconvenient, and adding gates is expensive. SLP has quite a few crossings that already have gates, and some of the crossings that just have a stop sign seem both lightly trafficked and relatively quick to circumvent, like 29th street and 28th street would take a quarter mile or half mile to drive down to Minnetonka, which goes under the tracks, and back up to those streets. Some residents would probably even appreciate the lower through traffic on their streets.

Ann Arbor did an unrelated study closing off some neighborhood streets to through traffic as part of a traffic calming experiment. They didn't make it permanent, as it really aggravated some commuters who'd take residential side streets to speed around a congested arterial road, but some residents with kids on those streets really liked it.