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.