Shakopee residents have been really good to me. The vast majority of the calls and emails that I get are about important issues and not frivolous (read=annoying) things.
By far, the single issue I get the most emails about is the train and how it blows the horn all the way through town some nights. It is frustrating and makes a lot of people angry. Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do about it.
Shakopee has a long history with the trains coming through town. They bring a lot of jobs to our town and the benefits far outweigh the problems. However, some of the engineers tend to be a bit overzealous with their horn blowing. Unfortunately, we are stuck.
The train must blow it’s horn at every uncontrolled road crossing for safety – typically it should be two short and one long. Now, it seems like the solution would be simple – put crossing bars on each road crossing. That would be a city expense and cost well over a million dollars but the cost isn’t the biggest problem. If we put in all of the crossing bars, the trains would not have to slow down when coming into Shakopee and could buzz through town at high speeds. These high speeds would create an unsafe situation as well as the shaking resulting from high speeds could damage buildings and infrastructure. It is not a good situation.
Those saying, “Well, they live by a train. Deal with it.” aren’t taking in the entire context. Recently the tracks were upgraded through town allowing more, bigger trains each day. We have significantly more trains going through Shakopee now than just a few years ago. I also get a lot of feedback that the horns are blowing a lot more through town than they used to.
Councillor Matt Lehman is the liaison and representative for the city with the Train Safety Committee. Please let him know of your concerns and questions about the trains in Shakopee. He lives not far from the tracks and has some of the best understanding of the issues we face as a city with high-volume tracks running through the heart of our town.
-Brad
Actually, this is a frivolous, annoying complaint; neither you and the city council can do a thing about an annoyance such as the train whistles. BTW you can hear them even if you don’t live in downtown (I live off of Vierling near the older fire station). Complaining about the train whistles would be like me complaining about the lights from Canterbury or the traffic noises coming from 169. The train whistles don’t wake me up and it is something that you get used to.
Thank you for your comment! Obviously not everyone agrees, but that is what makes this fun, right?! Have a great weekend!
Would adding crossing bars really be so dangerous? Without bars, you’ve got people who if they see a train coming, race to the next street to try and beat it. Now that’s dangerous (speeding plus playing chicken with a train)! The bars would hopefully keep people from doing that.
Plus, you said they would go through faster with crossing bars…great! Less time that we have to sit on either side waiting for it to crawl along (that thing takes forever!)
I say let’s put it to a vote! This is a democracy after all yes? =)
Side note: I live by the new high school. So the noise doesn’t affect me too much. But some nights it does seem like they are trigger happy with that horn button.
Actually “Good Grief”, if the train whistles do not wake you up, you should consider yourself lucky, not label the concern as frivolous.
I, unfortunately, live much too close to the train tracks – had I known the whistles would be this bad 10 years ago when I bought my home, I would never have bought it. Of course, ten years ago, the whistles weren’t nearly as bad as they are now – I used to be able to sleep through them, but in the last few years things have changed for the worst. I am routinely awakened 2 – 3 times a night due to the train whistles – and that’s with every window in the house closed (forget about ever sleeping with windows open!)
I’ve heard from a friend (who knows an employee of the railroad) that many engineers are irritated at the fact that the trains are required to slow down to 20mph going through town (when the tracks would allow 40mph) and have decided to protest the requirement by laying on the horns at night in the hopes that enough people complain and the requirement is lifted.
Why is there a 20mph speed limit? Can’t there by a compromise on the speed depending on the time of day? Can the speed limit can be increased between the hours of midnight and 5am? As far as vibrations damaging structures, is that something that all cities must deal with when tracks of some sort are added? Are structures in Minneapolis affected by the light rail routes that were installed? (I don’t know the answer to this one – I’m just curious).
I’m beginning to suspect that the railroad performs a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory on potential employees, and assigns those with sadistic tendencies to the night shift. It would be nice if someone would publish (in advance) the names of the engineers for upcoming routes so that if one of them becomes over-zealous with their horn in the middle of the night, I could return the favor by parking outside their house during the day and laying on my horn. Maybe then they’d stop? How excessive horn-blowing is NOT a violation of the noise ordinance is beyond me.