Windsor gets SMART to suspend early morning service until official ‘quiet zone’ is in place

By Austin Murphy | The Press Democrat (TNS)

PETALUMA, CALIF. — Responding to complaints from sleep-deprived residents living near the train tracks in and around Windsor, SMART officials announced Thursday that the agency is temporarily suspending three early morning, southbound trips.

The move comes just a few weeks after Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, with considerable pomp, opened its Windsor station May 31.

Not all residents, however, are jubilant.

Trains leaving the new station are required by the Federal Railroad Administration to sound their horns as they approach at-grade intersections between Windsor and Shiloh Road.

Romanticized though they may be in country music lyrics, those train whistles — especially from the SMART trips departing Windsor at 4:35 a.m., 4:58 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. — have been doing a number on the slumber of many people living along that corridor.

By popular demand, and at the request of the Windsor Town Council, SMART suspended those three pre-dawn trips, starting Monday.

“We understand and respect the Town’s request for a temporary suspension of early morning train service while they work to establish a Quiet Zone,” said SMART spokesperson Julia Gonzalez in a statement Friday afternoon.

Windsor is in the process of applying for the Federal Railroad Administration to establish a designated quiet zone, which would allow SMART engineers to lay off their horns.

But that process requires approval from both the FRA and the California Public Utilities Commission, requiring a 60-day review period “for recipients to review and provide any comments,” explained Carl Euphrat, Windsor’s deputy director of engineering, in a May 29 memo.

According to SMART, Windsor “is currently targeting late July for the implementation of the Quiet Zone.”

The suspended trips out of Windsor will continue to depart from the Sonoma County Airport Station, one stop to the south, at their regularly scheduled times.

Once the quiet zone is approved — much like other similar zones along the two-county line — “routine train horn use at designated crossings will be eliminated, except in emergency or safety-critical situations,” the agency said.

About six years ago, a spate of deaths along the rail line — four in 16 days — prompted SMART board members to reexamine their decision to allow quiet zones, which were preserved following a wide-ranging review.

The three early-morning trains out of Windsor will go back into service once the quiet zone is established, Gonzalez said.

In the meantime, she added, Windsor is shaping up to be one of SMART's highest performing stations.

“Last week, we averaged 424 daily boardings on weekdays” — a number that included 724 boardings on June 13, the day of the station’s grand opening celebration.

“On weekends we are averaging 378 daily boardings at Windsor.”

Another bump in popularity, at least among residents between Shiloh Road and Windsor, may come once the train is no longer in the business of making unsolicited wake-up calls.

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You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at [email protected] or on Twitter @ausmurph88.

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