Tuesday night, Aug. 16, Brian Martin, Asst. City Engineer, explained that after the passage of the Streets and Bridges bond measure in 2009 the City Council approved safety improvements to 10 UP crossings that would allow the City to institute a quiet zone where trains would not be required to blow their horns at every street crossing. The money set aside for these 10 crossings is $1.2 million but appears to be $600,000 short. However there are savings in some of the other projects in the bond measure and the expectation is that these 10 crossings will be completed. The process for establishing a QZ involves the City, ODOT Rail, the Federal Railroad Administration and the UP railroad. As is typical with multi-agency negotiations, it can take longer than expected. While the original estimate was to have the QZ in place by about December of this year, that has now been push out about a year. However, after 12 years of trying to get this issue resolved, I am so excited that it is moving along at all. Brian indicated that half of the crossings have their “final orders”, which means all parties have agreed as to who will complete what improvement at each crossing. He expects the remaining five crossings will have their final orders by about October of this year and that the work will be completed and a quiet zone can be implemented about 18 months after that. With luck, we may hear no more train horns in early 2013.