Aug 03, 2006

“Sometimes danger is where you least expect it.”

[from Reddit]

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Once again, politcs, grade-crossings and quiet zones intersect:

“Parallel steel ­ there’s some sort of attraction to it,” Mark Challed, Metrolink engineers’ supervisor, says over the engines’ roar. “People ­ they can’t seem to stay away.”

So Friesen pumps the yellow button ­ and more and more neighbors along the tracks go to city halls and make their own noise about somehow muffling the horns.

..

But there are costs: Some engineers feel safer hitting the horn, safeguards can require millions of dollars and city officials harbor a lingering concern about lawsuits if accidents do occur.

..

Another, perhaps more daunting hurdle for Santa Ana and other communities: If officials get horns silenced, and an accident occurs, could the city be dragged into a multimillion dollar lawsuit?

“It will be the first lawsuit getting filed in a quiet zone that decides it,” Ross says.

Lot’s of good questions, and no easy answers.

The article also has a good diagram that lays out the “2-quad gates + median” and “4-quad gates” options for quiet zones.

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I don’t know what’s worse: that this showed up in my referrer logs, or that my site was the first hit…

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