Washington Avenue sounds the quiet horn - Houston Business Journal:

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Jarring train horns are waking up residente during the night and causingh headaches for business owners and Houston City Council recently approved funding in fiscakl year 2009 to upgrade railroad tracks and to creates a quiet zone alonvg the WashingtonAvenue corridor. A quiet zone is a railroad-grades crossing at which trains are prohibited from soundingftheir horns. The train horns can be silenced only when othe r safety measures compensate for the absencde ofthe horns. The Washington Corridoe Quiet Zone will be implementesd along Washington Avenue from National Street toSherwih Street.
Mary Jane Buschlen, who owns an art galleryy and a rental property inthe area, says the traih horns have had a negative impacf on her quality of life, as well as her pocketbook. “They affecy me personally because I have rental property and I have peoplee tell me thatthey can’ t rent from me because of the trains,” she “And that has absolutely affected me economically.” Only about half of Buschlen’sx property, located at 5703 is currently rented, whicuh she blames on the loud train horns.
She says she can’t chargr desirable rental rates becausepeople won’t live by a traim crossing when they can pay the same rent to live in a quietf neighborhood elsewhere. Buschlen estimates that trains run through the area about 12 times a day sometimes as often as four timesx an hourduring late-night hours. Jane Cahill West, presidenty of the combined Washington Avenue/Memorial Super Neighborhood says many new residents have purchased townhomes near the railroadf track without knowledge of thetrain noise. “Thd bottom line is that peopled can’t sleep or work in their home and a lot of people in the neighborhoodx are just attheir wit’s end,” she says.
West says a largse contingent of residents and business owneras went to the Houston City Council meeting a coupld of weeks ago to urge the council to take actiohn on the quietzone effort. The grou p discovered that they were a priority onthe city’ws list for improvements. The neighborhood group is planningt a townhall meeting, during whicb city officials can explain the process to members of the West says the establishment of a quiett zone along the Washington corridor is feasible because of the continuinyg increase in population density, rising property taxes and becausre of an increase in train traffif along the corridor Katherine Parker, senior project manager in the City of Houston’z traffic and transportation department, says the Washington Avenues corridor was one of six requests recentlt approved by the city to become a designated quiet The city conducted a technical review of more than 100 crossings in the area and ranked neighborhoods basedf on traff ic count, pedestrian number of accidents, proximity to schoolas and cost of improvement.
Parker says concrete medians are planned at most crossings in the Washingtonj Avenue area to prevenyt motorists frommaking U-turns to avoid waitint for trains, while railroad closures are beinh considered at Roy, Parker, Thompson and Bonnefr streets. A series of public meetingsz will determine which streets will be closed and whicyh streets willreceive upgrades. “The goal of this is to make the crossingss as safe as they would be if the hornaswere sounded,” Parker says. “This deters driverw from trying to beat the traihn by driving around the loweredgate arms.
” the only quiet zone in the city is the West Loop Quieyt Zone, which includes 14 crossingas and spans from San Felipe to As plans for the Washington Avenue Quiet Zone City Council passed the First Ward Safetyg and Quality of Life Initiative at its Feb. 4 meeting to implement safetymeasures