Posted on Wed, Oct. 04, 2006

Here we go again. The new ''Quiet Zone'' banning train horns along the FEC and Tri-Rail tracks between Stirling and Pembroke roads in Hollywood may please nearby residents, but it doesn't bode well for public safety -- and that should be the primary concern. Hollywood has joined Boca Raton in treading through an arduous approval process of silencing train horns.

City officials promise that new crossing features -- double guard gates and higher medians -- will prevent motorists from trying to cross the tracks as a train approaches. But that assumes crossing gates will always work, which they don't.

Collisions, fatalities

This is the second go-round for train whistle bans in South Florida. In the mid-1980s Broward and Miami-Dade counties and numerous Florida cities banned train whistles from sounding between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m along the FEC's 350 miles of track. A federal report in 1990 cited an alarming increase in train-vehicle collisions and crossing fatalities after the bans took effect. In 1991, when neither the state nor any local communities had responded to the concerns, the Federal Railroad Administration nullified the bans in Florida for safety reasons.

A sort of Catch-22 is at play here. As train traffic increased after Tri-Rail's second-track project between Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties finished up last year, so did the number of trains blowing air horns. That raised nearby Hollywood residents' already notable objections to the noise. Yet the growing frequency of trains also increases the need for warning blasts as an engine approaches crossings. Improving mass transit, especially rail networks, is a major regional goal, and train traffic is inevitably rising. Some safety experts legitimately fear that Hollywood and Boca Raton will start a risky trend.

Nearby condo projects

But here is where things get even more contradictory. Not everyone seems bothered by train horns. As open land dwindles, builders are redeveloping in older communities where the CSX and FEC tracks are located. In Wilton Manors, for example, Wilton Station -- a 10-acre urban village mixing condos, retail and a posh spa -- is rising right next to the CSX tracks at Wilton Drive and 26th Street. Just south of 26th Street are two smaller, recently completed and well-occupied condo projects sandwiched between the tracks and Dixie Highway.

Some builders are touting a plan to put a commuter train on the CSX track through coastal downtowns as an advantage of nearby projects. Downtown Fort Lauderdale has several new condo buildings within earshot of the CSX tracks already. Trains are more and more an ever-present fact of life here. Whistle bans aren't the solution, as they only exacerbate growing public-safety challenges.