Peace at Last - Smyrna Vinings Trains Going Quiet
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Smyrna Vinings residents will soon be able to sleep a little better within the coming year. While trains are often considered nostalgic, a lot of people tend to differ on that opinion when the horn sounds at 5 am.
Both the City of Smyrna and Cobb County have been given approval for quiet zones to be installed. The quiet zones will require a four-arm gate system that fully blocks vehicles from entering crossings from both approach and departure lanes. This ensures that no one can try to race through the crossing and beat the train. As a result of the implementation of these new crossing systems, the trains will no longer need to blow their horns.
These quiet crossings will be the first quiet zones set up in Georgia under a 2004 Federal Railroad Administration program that allows whistle bans on lines as long as extra safety measures have been implemented. The crossings where the new systems will be deployed are the crossings at Hawthorne Street, Spring Road (across from Smyrna Market Village and next to the up and coming Jonquil Village), Paces Ferry Road and Woodland Brook Drive.
The Vinings Quiet Train Campaign has been under way since 1995 and early this year had raised $441,000 in funds (including contributions by area devleopers such as Kairos and Weaver and Woodberry) and received an additional $300,000 in funds from Cobb County in Special Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) to cover the cost. CSX approved the installation on February 26, 2007 and the quiet crossings should be implemented by January of 2008.
In August, the City of Smyrna and CSV approved the installation of the quiet crossings as well. The City of Smyrna is funding the estimated $700,000 in construction costs with 80% coming from a federal transportation grant and the remaining amount from from SPLOST funds. The two crossings in Smyrna should be complete by the middle of 2008.
These quiet crossings have been in the works for years and have been eagerly awaited, both for current Smyrna Vinings residents and also by developers. The quiet crossings should have a beneficial impact on new Smyrna Vinings developments located close to the crossings such as Jonquil Village, Spring Street Village, Rileys Walk, Avignon at Vinings, Vinings Main and The Aberdeen.
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