Feds Get Serious on Rail Crossings

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal officials are getting serious about warning horns at railroad crossings in an attempt to prevent accidents like the Bourbonnais, Ill., train crash that killed 11 and wounded more than 100.

The Federal Railroad Administration is writing a new regulation, proposed to take effect late next year, that would order trains to sound their whistles every time they near an intersection.

The issue is important in Illinois like almost nowhere else.

The Prairie State, with its miles and miles of track, had racked up the second-most deaths at grade crossings even before the New Orleans-bound Amtrak train smashed into a steel-laden semitrailer in March. Between 1991 and 1998, Illinois saw 288 deaths - behind only Texas.

Illinois also has the second-highest number of crossings, meaning more noise for many communities if the regulation is approved. The state has a total of 15,746 crossings, including those on private as well as public property.

And the new rule would likely supersede the hundreds of state laws and local ordinances enacted to create so-called "quiet zones" in communities where noisy locomotive whistles are banned.

Illinois ranks high in that category as well. With 121 so-called "whistle bans" covering 898 crossings already in place, Illinois has more than 25 percent of all such laws passed around the country, according to the FRA.

Under the new regulation, such quiet zones would be allowed only in communities that have taken often extremely expensive steps to protect impatient drivers from themselves by installing hard-to-circumvent gates, median walls or other protections.

Illinois is the first state to test the effectiveness of special "dragnets," which descend to stop vehicles from driving around crossing gates. Able to stop fully loaded semitrailers going 60 mph, the $1.2 million nets were installed by state and federal officials at Chenoa and McLean in central Illinois and Hartford near Alton.

The state also has spent more than $90 million preparing for high-speed rail, and much of that has gone toward improving crossing safety around the state.

The FRA expects to hold hearings on the draft regulation after its expected release sometime next month. At least one of those forums is nearly certain to be held in Illinois because of its central role in the nation's rail activity, said FRA spokesman Warren Flatau.