WI: Amtrak tradeoff: More trains mean Madison will need to build more 'quiet zones'

While the question of whether Amtrak will return to Madison ultimately lies in the hands of state and federal planners, a Downtown alderman says he wants to make sure that, if the trains do come, road crossings are equipped to handle the extra traffic.

Ald. Mike Verveer on Tuesday introduced a resolution calling on the city’s Transportation Department to apply for a $6.75 million federal grant to prepare for the possible resumption of passenger rail travel connecting Madison to Milwaukee and the Twin Cities, as well as improve existing crossings to expand “quiet zones.”

Quiet zones are areas along track lines where trains are not required to blow their horns except in emergencies. Under federal law, train engineers are required to blow their horns at unimproved railroad crossings regardless of hazards.

To become a quiet zone, all crossings within at least half a mile of the area need to have signals, gates to block traffic from crossing the tracks and horns and lights warning time of oncoming trains.

Between 2008 and 2019, five quiet zones were set up on the Near West, East, South sides and Downtown to reduce noise complaints. The city has applied for federal grants to improve crossing around six other proposed quiet zones — including one along the Isthmus between Henry and Ingersoll Street — that have gone unaddressed.

“It's been a personal frustration of mine that they have not acted on our quiet zone application,” Verveer said. “So this grant, if awarded, would also help us cover the cost of improving crossings in the city in anticipation of applying for quiet zones.”

According to the grant application, Madison would match federal money with $1.35 million from its own budget to fund the potential project.

Crossing improvements can cost $250,000 to $300,000, according to the Madison engineering division. The Isthmus proposal alone would require improvements at five crossings on Blair, Blount, Livingston, Paterson and Brearly streets.

Any work to expand quiet zones could also end up being undone by the very thing city planners hope the grant money can bring about, Steve Sonntag, with the engineering division said.

“Our existing five zones were created based on the existing train counts and traffic,” Sonntag told the Wisconsin State Journal. “If high-speed rail comes in, the train counts are significantly going to go up,”

If that happens Madison would have to reapply for its quiet zones, “and there's a good chance by increasing that train count, they will need substantially more improvements at each crossing,” he said.

But the return of passenger rail would likely take years to come to fruition. Last month, the transportation department released a final draft of its Amtrak station study which anticipates service beginning sometime in the 2030s.

Wilson Street chosen as preferred location for Madison Amtrak station

If passenger trains return to Madison, the city wants its Amtrak station built along existing rail lines close to Downtown, transit and parking.

Madison only has so much power to bring Amtrak to the Downtown, with the final decision in the hands of the federal and state governments, who would foot most of the bill. An early 2010s plan for a Madison-to- Milwaukee passenger rail project was nixed by then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, who called the current proposal a “dumb idea.”

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