The Federal Railroad Administration found 34 railroad crossings from Provo to Salt Lake City in need of upgrades and suspended the Lehi Quiet Zone which prevents trains from using their horns when approaching railroad crossings.
A quiet zone is a rail line segment with “one or more consecutive public highway-rail grade crossings” where locomotive horns are not routinely sounded, according to the administration's website.
"We have to honk our horns. It's not a judgment call, believe me," Gavin Gustafson, the spokesman for the Utah Transit Authority, said. "We don't want to, but we have to."
Gustafson said that until all of the railroad crossings from Provo to Salt Lake City are brought to compliance with the administration's code, any trains traveling on the railroad are required by the administration to sound their horns when approaching a crossing, Gustafson said.
"Of course, it's a safety thing," Gustafson said, "and that's our number one concern."
A joint statement from the Utah Transit Authority and the Union Pacific Railroad Company stated that their "compliance of horn sounding keeps people safe in areas" where safety measures do not meet the administration's quiet zone standards.
Since its creation in 2012, the quiet zone has ranged from Provo to Salt Lake City and has been under the jurisdiction of Lehi City, Vern Keesler, Provo City traffic manager, said.
Keesler said quiet zones are recertified and updated every three years, but after changes in the Federal Register occurred, the administration found that certain upgrades and modifications to railroad crossings from Provo to Salt Lake City had not been made.
“They gave communities about 90 days to get those changes updated in mid-July, which many of our communities did,” Keesler said. “Some other communities did not, and the Federal Railroad Administration showed them that they weren't kidding around.”
The administration suspended the Lehi Quiet Zone on Sept. 30, Lehi City traffic engineer Luke Seegmiller said.
Seegmiller also said that they are in the process of upgrading the one remaining crossing, which is in South Salt Lake City and has a gate that opens too close to the railroad crossing.
While he is unsure when the final crossing will be completed, Seegmiller said he will submit paperwork to the administration after the crossing is upgraded. After that, the trains will take “hopefully no more than a week” to update their systems and the quiet zone will be reinstated, he added.
Until the quiet zone gets reinstated, trains passing through Provo and Salt Lake City will be required to use their horns as they enter railroad crossings.
Some Provo residents shared how the train horns have affected their lives.
Brittany Eastman, a BYU student who lives near the train tracks by the Provo cemetery, said the late-night train horns keep her from sleeping.
“I only hear the trains at night, it's so horrendous. It's late hours of the night too, 10 p.m. is the earliest they go off, but I normally hear them around midnight to 2 a.m.,” Eastman said. “I can sleep through it if I'm already asleep. But if I'm not asleep yet, I can't get to sleep if they're going off.”
Another Provo resident, Aliza Keller, said she and her roommates who live near Slate Canyon have noticed the train horns at night.
“It's just been really loud out of nowhere. I feel like it wasn't like that before,” Keller said. “And they're always late at night, and they’ve woken me up in the night.”
Alex Spackman lives in Provo with his wife and their baby. Though they don't live too close to the station, they have also noticed the train horns at night.
“It's fortunately never been loud enough to wake up the baby,” Spackman said, “but they’re surprisingly loud, I can only imagine how loud it is for people who actually live near the station.”
Provo resident William Lovell uses the Frontrunner to commute to school in Salt Lake City multiple days a week and finds the horns distracting when taking calls or doing homework on his commute.
“To use the horn at least three times when going through a train stop or an intersection is a little overkill in my opinion,” Lovell said.
Lovell also said he noticed how loud the horns were while the train was entering and exiting the Provo Frontrunner Station, which Lovell said is situated near a number of residential homes.
“Coming into Provo and Orem,” Lovell said, “you'll have a hot spot of people that have to deal with the noise of the train.”