City Council discusses incomplete train noise-relief project originally approved in 2016
Changing the project to utilize a wayside horn instead of a quiet zone could save $349,979, but council is uncertain of direction
BURLESON – The Burleson City Council discussed a train-horn noise-relief project near Valley Creek Estates Tuesday at City Hall.
The project, which hasn’t been submitted for the city council’s approval, attempts to reduce noise for residents by installing a wayside horn at the Union Pacific Railroad crossing on County Road 714/Dobson Street, offering an alternative to a train horn.
It’d cost $550,021 and would be completed by January 2025. Burleson has $334,713 to fund the project and needs an additional $215,308.
City manager Tommy Ludwig said the project could be funded by Burleson’s limited debt-capacity.
The city council approved a contract with TranSystems Corporation for design and permitting of quiet zones, areas where trains don’t routinely sound horns, at Burleson’s railroad-crossings on Commerce, Renfro, Ellison and Eldred streets and County Road 714 for train-horn noise-relief in 2016.
Since the train horn is used to prevent collisions, quiet zones are only allowed under railroad law if the railroad-crossing area meets certain safety requirements.
The only incomplete quiet-zone project is on County Road 714 and costs $900,000, a $200,000 increase from the $700,000 2016 cost. The quiet-zone projects on Commerce, Renfro, Ellison and Eldred were completed before 2021.
Ruben Gonzalez, a Valley Crest Estates resident and Homeowners Association representative said it feels like the city isn’t going to do anything since the project hasn’t been started while the other projects have already been completed.
“I will tell you from personal experience the railroads are legendarily indifferent to a city’s time schedule about when something needs to be done,” city attorney Allen Taylor said to the city council at the meeting.
“We kept getting told we’d get done, we’d get done, we’d get done,” Gonzalez said. “And then next thing you know, we got told ‘project complete,’ and we didn’t have anything.”
Mayor Pro Tem Dan McClendon doesn’t like that the County Road 714 project hasn’t been completed, he said at the meeting. He added that the city cut the project when it didn’t have room for it in the budget anymore after the cost “went exponentially beyond what [the council] thought it would.”
“I don’t like being that way,” McClendon said. “I like to follow through or we should’ve never started the discussion in the first place. But I think we owe the people something because they’ve been very patient.”
Ludwig expressed concern about not making a decision and ending up in a similar situation in the future.
“My fear would just simply be the possibility is we come back in two or three years and we’ve got cost-escalation and we potentially have the conversation again because now it’s bloated beyond what we have funding for,” Ludwig said at the meeting.
Errick Thompson, city public works and engineering director and presenter of the project at the meeting, was “hard-pressed” to give a realistic timeline on obtaining updated pricing from the railroad but said it could “optimistically” take four to five months.
“I will tell you from personal experience the railroads are legendarily indifferent to a city’s time schedule about when something needs to be done,” city attorney Allen Taylor said to the city council at the meeting.
Councilmember Larry Scott, who spent 45 years in the railroad industry, isn’t in favor of the project because of the cost and unclear maintenance responsibilities and because he doesn’t think the residents will notice much of a relief from the noise.
“I know the neighborhood wants a quiet zone, but this is not a quiet zone,” Scott said. “They’ll hear just as much noise from those [wayside] horns.”
McClendon said he attended the testing and thought the noise difference was insignificant. “You don’t hear it quite as loud, but you still hear a horn,” he said.
Gonzalez said the wayside horn made a drastic enhancement during testing and that the only people who could hear it were those in the horn’s direction.
Councilmember Adam Russell said his thought is to nix the project and instead fund a sidewalk project discussed earlier in the meeting.
“The people that live there built their houses with the horn already blasting,” Russell said. “That’s just kind of my thought with spending $900,000.”
McClendon preferred the quiet-zone project over the wayside-horn project.
Scott requested putting this item on the next meeting’s agenda to give the council members time to be “individual investigators” and identify issues, talk with citizens and listen to the noise. Ludwig said the item can be brought back with more information.
Councilmember Victoria Johnson pointed out the project would need to be considered simultaneously with another project aligning Dobson Street and County Road 714.
Mayor Chris Fletcher apologized to Gonzalez and assured him the city would try to expedite the process after suggesting the city council didn’t have enough information to give proper direction.
“We didn’t intend for this to happen like this, but we will try to do better in the future if you bear with us,” Fletcher said to Gonzalez at the meeting.
The city council’s next regular meeting is March 4 but will hold a special session Friday at 9 a.m. at City Hall. This project is not on the special session’s agenda.