In response to residents’ concerns over train horns sounding during early morning hours, the City Council initiated the process required to create a Train Horn Quiet Zone for Old Town residents at the May 6 meeting.
Since the Capital Metro Red Line commuter trains began running in March, residents who live near the railroad crossing at FM 2243 have had their early mornings and evenings interrupted by the loud, considered by many to be blaring, train horns.
Old Town resident Nina Harwick asked the Council at the April 21 Council meeting to create a quiet zone, which would keep train engineers from sounding their horns in designated areas. Warwick collected signatures from Old Town neighbors in a petition that asked Cap Metro and city officials to create the quiet zone.
The city’s other public train crossing, at Crystal Falls, is already a train horn quiet zone, designated in 2005.
Mayor John Cowman initiated the multi-step process which, with no interruptions, will allow for the official quiet zone to be effective no earlier than late July.
The Council took the first step and approved the notice of intent, which begins a 60-day comment period. During this time, federal railway administrators are also notified.
The final step is a 21-day period called the notice of establishment, when residents and railroad operators receive notifications of the establishment and start dates of the quiet zone and signs will be posted.
The signs will cost about $1,000, paid for by the city.
The FM 2243 crossing is the last public crossing along the 32-mile Red Line track to receive a quiet zone designation.
Last year, Cedar Park created the quiet zones for its public crossings and in Austin, all public crossings with four-armed safety gates have the quiet zone designation except for temporary suspensions for construction and intersection improvements.

Train operators do retain the right, even in quiet zones, to sound the horns if they foresee imminent danger.

The Council also approved the Reagan/Parmer Corridor Utility Phasing plan at the May 6 meeting.
The study, which is the product of a partnership between a developer association and the city, offers a phased plan for water and wastewater pipelines and gives prospective developers and buyers planned pipeline sized required for growth as it happens during the next 20 years.
“It gives the landowners and the city shovel-ready dirt,” said Joseph Greene, a chairman in the Reagan/Parmer Corridor Association.
The study, prepared by Bury + Partners, Inc., outlines a phased plan to bring water and wastewater lines to a previously underdeveloped area of the city that have little to no water and wastewater service to many of the land parcels.
Developers already have multiple tracts with future improvements planned in the area including single family developments to commercial developments.
The plan begins at the south end of Reagan Boulevard near RM 1431 north of the San Gabriel River area to the Chisholm Trail Special Utility District service area.
Marci Cannon, a principal with the Reagan/Parmer Corridor Association who served as the liaison between the landowners group and Bury + Partners, said the project offers a solution that will work for 10 to 20 years.
The plan took a medium-growth scenario through 2029 to determine the projected demands for water and wastewater services over the next five, 10 and 20 years. The projected growth was based on the city’s 2008 master water and wastewater plan conducted by K Friese & Associates.
Greene said he attributes the creation and success of the partnership between landowners and the city to City Manager Biff Johnson.
“It was his idea to form the group to do the study,” Greene said.
In 2008, the city and the Reagan/Parmer Corridor agreed to share the $50,000 cost of the study. The plan, he said, clearly shows developers and prospective buyers the cost up front of bringing water and wastewater services to their properties.
Cannon added that the plan allows for a more of a shared cost of bringing services to the undeveloped area since the plan outlines a phased in approach.