Cities everywhere are encouraging the development of housing and hotels downtown. One noisy problem: City centers often lie adjacent to railroad tracks. And while the noise is tolerable in a 9-to-5 city where office workers go home at night, it can be disruptive in a 24-hour downtown.
One solution is a quiet zone.
Federal regulators allow quiet zones in areas where cities have added a variety of safety features to keep vehicles and pedestrians off the tracks. But it’s a lengthy and expensive process.
Rapid City, SD, started its pursuit of a quiet zone in 2016. A feasibility study was completed in 2018, but the city lacked funding to proceed. A new grant covers planning and preliminary design work and will position the city to seek additional grant funds to cover the costs of implementing necessary safety and compliance features. In other words, silencing the train horns could prove to be a decade-long project. In the meantime, some Rapid City hotels will continue to provide guests with earplugs.
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