RR quiet zone funding an issue
The latest cost estimate for creating a
quiet zone at the Birch Point Drive railroad crossing is $377,489,
public works director John Wilson told the Whitefish City Council
on March 21.
In 2008, the city installed equipment
at the State Park Road and Second Street railroad crossings for
less than $10,000 so locomotive engineers no longer had to blast
their horns there, but those sites already had crossing arms and
signal equipment in place.
According to Wilson’s latest cost
estimates, BNSF Railway agreed to pay about $48,488 of the total
cost for a quiet zone at Birch Point, and the Montana Department of
Transportation would pay about $96,977.
If the city limited itself to about
$9,300 — comparable to what it paid for the other two quiet zones —
that would leave $222,724, or about 59 percent of the total cost,
for nearby residents.
The crossing arms and signal equipment
must be in place before the at-grade crossing can be made into a
quiet zone. The city paid for signage and channelization devices
installed in the center of the roadway for about 100 feet in either
direction at the other two crossings, but the roadway at the Birch
Point crossing must be widened to accommodate the channelization
devices.
Wilson warned the council that his
department is very busy with other projects right now, and using
additional street fund money for Birch Point would divert money
away from other city street projects.
Doug Wise told the council the Birch
Point residents he represents were willing to create a
special-improvement district (SID) to help pay for the project, but
their share as proposed was too high.
“We wanted to put skin in the game, not
the whole body,” he said.
Wise wanted the city to do more, saying
they had the leverage to negotiate with MDT and BNSF and the
leverage to do more grant research.
He also pointed to an additional safety
issue at Birch Point as the nearby Great Northern Veterans Peace
Park is developed and more children begin to use the area.
Enlarging the size of the SID to
include neighbors on both sides of the track and the golf course
could spread the cost, Wise noted.
City manager Chuck Stearns said the
cost to residents possibly could be reduced to $3,000 to $4,000 per
property by including more residents and by not setting up an SID
but organizing neighbors and going to the bank. The drawback is
that such an arrangement would not be compulsory, he said.
The council directed staff to continue
looking for grant funding, and councilor Turner Askew said he would
help with a completely different approach to funding.