Think back to the last time you stopped your car, or your bike or just yourself, because a train was crossing the street you were driving or riding or walking on.

Did you stop because you heard the train’s whistle?

Or because the red-and-white arms were blocking your path and the lights were flashing, or because another car, or cars, were already stopped?

Now think about when you continued on your way.

Did you drive or pedal or walk on because you could no longer hear the whistle?

Or because the arms lifted, the lights stopped flashing and, if there were any cars in front of you, they had driven on?

The answers here are obvious.

We don’t need to hear a whistle to know when we need to stop at the railroad tracks. If the whistles alone were vital to preventing trains from hitting cars or people, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) would not have approved a single quiet zone.

But that agency has approved more than 900 of them in the past 15 years or so, including 13 in Oregon (some of those, including in Pendleton, were adopted by local ordinance earlier and were allowed to continue).

The reason quiet zones are so common is simple — to qualify for one, a city first has to bolster the physical means that keep vehicles off the tracks at crossings. Common tactics include building concrete medians that prevent cars from driving around the crossing arms.

There’s ample evidence that these measures work, and that the safety benefit of whistles alone is perception, not reality. A 2017 report from the Government Accountability Office — the official federal auditor — concluded that FRA studies in 2011 and 2013, which included 562 quiet zones, “showed that there was generally no statistically significant difference in the number of accidents that occurred before and after quiet zones were established.”

This is hardly surprising. If a vehicle can’t physically get to the tracks when a train is passing, then it’s obviously not going to be hit by that train. All other factors — lights, whistles — are rendered irrelevant by that physical reality.

Another objection raised by people who oppose the Baker City Council’s 4-3 decision on Jan. 25 to apply for a quiet zone is the cost of improvements to five crossings in the city. But this concern is also misplaced. A citizens group says it will raise the estimated $150,000. And if they fail, there won’t be a quiet zone — the plan the City Council approved specifically states that the money the group raises, not city dollars, will pay for the improvements.

Michelle Owen, the city’s public works director, told councilors that long-term maintenance of the crossing upgrades could average $500 a year. That’s not a firm figure, to be sure, but there’s no evidence that the cost to the city for maintenance would be anything but negligible, or that any city resident would pay a penny more, in fees or taxes to the city, as a result of the quiet zone.

As for the potential for the city to be held liable for an accident at a crossing, the existence of so many hundreds of quiet zones strongly suggests that such liability is not deterring cities. According to the FRA, its rule establishing criteria for creating quiet zones “is intended to remove failure to sound the horn as a cause of action in lawsuits involving collisions that have occurred at grade crossings within duly established quiet zones.”

The FRA has also studied the effect of quiet zones on death rates for people who trespass on the railroad right-of-way and are hit and killed by a train (this does not include suicides). In other words, people who might not be deterred, as vehicles would be, by physical upgrades at crossings. Yet over a three-year period, “there was no statistically significant difference in trespass casualties before and after the establishment of the quiet zones,” according to a September 2020 report.

Quiet zones are not, to be sure, completely silent. The discretion to sound the whistle always lies with the train crew. But given the physics of trains, which weigh hundreds of tons and can take a mile to stop, the whistle, whether blown routinely as now, or in emergencies as in a quiet zone, likely would be equally effective in preventing what the FRA calls “trespass casualties.” In either case, the train probably wouldn’t be able to stop before hitting a trespasser. It’s plausible that now, with trains sounding their whistle within a quarter-mile of crossings, a trespasser might be warned, via the whistle, somewhat sooner than in an emergency situation, especially at night. Yet the FRA study found that about 74% of trespassing casualties happen within a quarter-mile of crossings, so it’s likely that a trespasser would have about as much advance warning after a quiet zone is established as before.

— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor