ENCINITAS, Calif. — The community effort to stop loud train horns through Encinitas is on track to pass its first hurdle in City Hall.
CBS 8 first told you back in February that some trains passing through the Encinitas Station violated the U.S. Department of Transportation's train horn rule. That story helped spark a movement.
“Your story raised a lot more awareness,” said Pete Albanese. Pete lives a mile from the tracks and his watch monitors his sleep. He showed us a printout with 3 noticeable spikes in the middle of the night. “You can see when you've been woken up and it correlates to when the trains come through.”
Pete knows a lack of sleep can cause health issues, and it's not just him. Now, 645 of his neighbors have signed a petition asking city leaders to create a quiet zone through the area.
A quiet zone allows trains to pass without blowing their horn. What the people are asking for isn't unique to Encinitas. There is already a quiet zone in this city about 2 miles from the Encinitas Station. It's located in Cardiff, at Chesterfield Drive.
On Wednesday afternoon, CBS 8 watched a train go by with no horn.
So why is that area a quiet zone and not the area around the Encinitas station?
CBS 8 is working for you, so we went to Councilman Tony Kranz for answers.
“This intersection - Leucadia - only has two gates,” he said. “We have to put up two more for quad gates to keep cars from trying to go around.” Kranz says four intersections would have to add the extra gates at a cost of around $2 million each. It’s money the city doesn't have.
So why did the Cardiff area get it? Lucky timing. Turns out, another project was already planned for that area allowing the city to save a lot of money. “We took advantage of the fact that SANDAG was paying a big chunk of that project,” Kranz said.
Kranz added that some residents don't want the city spending money on a quiet zone because the people complaining knowingly bought homes near the tracks, but he says there are a lot more trains going through the area now, and at all hours.
At Wednesday's city council meeting, he will ask that money be approved to study the design and engineering of a quiet zone. His hope is that once they have a design, they can get state and federal money to help pay for the final construction.
WATCH RELATED: One Amtrak engineer’s consistent horn causing headache in Encinitas (Feb. 2022).