City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Ypsi
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Ann Arbor is a nice town with some (a lot of) weirdos.. while I don't live in AA (screen name "ypsi" for a reason) is a nice place to go, very walkable and decent stuff to do. I find that when you are downtown in the state/ main area the people are not bad, and in general if you aren't looking for the pretentious you won't see it. I find what you get out of something is what you put in, and if you go in with a poor attitude that's what you will see.

Imo the cheapest solution would be to curfew AA train traffic. Planes have curfews in San Diego, if you're going to not make it before midnight you can't land that night and literally have to turn the plane around. I think it's 6am to midnight planes can land there (the flight path is RIGHT over everything basically). I know it would NEVER happen as WATCO has zero reason to do so, this whole issue likely wouldn't be a problem if the trains ran 0600-2000 instead of literally the reverse that. If people didn't have to deal with it at night, it would be much less of a noise issue.. but then we have traffic back ups... no winning ever.
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chapmaja
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

Unread post by chapmaja »

dave989 wrote:Next they will put a quiet zone on the big house!
There were people in town who tried, when it was announced they would be putting in lights and hosting night football games. The horror of night games at a 100,000 seat stadium in a college town made some people sick. I do recall petitions going around asking the City of Ann Arbor to force UofM to not have the night game the first time. Funny thing is the city has absolutely no control over what UofM does with the property they own in the city. This has been the basis for many complaints because the more property the school owns, the more property the city doesn't collect taxes on.

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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Steve B wrote:Unless you actually live in Ann Arbor, there's no point in getting so upset. It's interesting how Durand is a quiet zone yet people on this board don't trash them about it.
There is a huge difference. People in and around Durand are largely used to dealing with the railroad running through town and generally have shown a decent respect to the laws regarding the railroad property and the laws of common sense.

Ann Arbor is it's own beast as a city. I have noticed a few things living in AA previously and having been a regular visitor to the city for work and pleasure. The if the city doesn't like something, they pass a ordinance and except everyone to abide by it, even if you don't know it exists (see pedestrian crosswalk law, which is more restrictive than the state law). They also have speed limits which is set in defiance of the state law regarding how speed limits in the state are legally to be set for roadways. The government is out of control with many of their decisions and the people are often worse. Many of the people in town have shown little respect for basic things. I have seen several instances of bike riders showing no respect for anyone except themselves. What do I mean. I have passed the same bike multiple times driving into AA. Why? When I stop for a red light, the bike blows right through. I pass them again and stop for the next red, while they blow right through. The problem is in AA moreso than anywhere else in this state, if the bike rider gets killed or injured, the drive will be blames even if they had the green light.


I consider myself an independent politically, but I lean slightly to the right of center. AA is so far to the left that it's on its side. Trying to present an opposing point of view to many in AA is more difficult than getting Trump to admit when he's wrong.

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Saturnalia
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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chapmaja wrote: I consider myself an independent politically, but I lean slightly to the right of center. AA is so far to the left that it's on its side. Trying to present an opposing point of view to many in AA is more difficult than getting Trump to admit when he's wrong.
28.7 square miles surrounded by reality? :lol:
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Chip
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Saturnalia wrote:
chapmaja wrote: I consider myself an independent politically, but I lean slightly to the right of center. AA is so far to the left that it's on its side. Trying to present an opposing point of view to many in AA is more difficult than getting Trump to admit when he's wrong.
28.7 square miles surrounded by reality? :lol:
Holy crap this pretty much sums it up perfectly

kenN
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Sounds like it's similar to Boulder, Colorado, which they've nicknamed "The People's Republic of Boulder."

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Saturnalia
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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kenN wrote:Sounds like it's similar to Boulder, Colorado, which they've nicknamed "The People's Republic of Boulder."
Ann Arbor is worse. It’s much more like “The Democratic People’s Republic of Ann Arbor”
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johnnycat
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Whelp, I knew it was only a matter of time before this board descended into a political forum. Adios everyone.

PatAzo
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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There is nothing wrong with quiet zones and people who don't like horns have just as much right to utilize the First Amendment as anyone else. If they can drum up the support and the financing more power to them.

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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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PatAzo wrote:There is nothing wrong with quiet zones and people who don't like horns have just as much right to utilize the First Amendment as anyone else. If they can drum up the support and the financing more power to them.
Ooh that's a good way of doing it... it'll never happen that way. But it'd be nice to say, "yes we can make A2 a QZ, as long as the supporters raise the millions required to do it"

Knowing Ann Arbor, it'll probably happen & come out of our taxes that could have been used to fix our broken infrastructure.

peter

PS on a side note, does anyone know what rules the FRA has on what types of crossing protection systems a RR should install based on the road/traffic? I'd be curious if those AA crossings are actually in compliance.
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chapmaja
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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The crossings would require major upgrades to be compliant with FRA QZ requirements. This is where the huge costs would come in.

I dont think any of then would be compliant with the QZ requirements.

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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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Ypsi wrote:...very walkable...
Very walkable, but hardly parkable.

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PerRock
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

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chapmaja wrote:The crossings would require major upgrades to be compliant with FRA QZ requirements. This is where the huge costs would come in.

I dont think any of then would be compliant with the QZ requirements.
More just general compliant, not QZ. In particular, I was thinking about where AA crosses Main or State... Both are a busy street, with no gates.

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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

Unread post by justalurker66 »

The "easy" way to get a new quiet zone is to make sure all of the crossings have active signals with gates and supplementary safety measures. Approval is automatic. If one does not want to pay for upgraded crossings a quiet zone is still possible but a points system has to be met. Make the "Quiet Zone Risk Index" calculation lower than the "National Significant Risk Threshold". Or at least less than double the NSRT. Quiet zones approved via the points system undergo an annual review.

As far as non-quiet zone crossings, the has a lot more recommendations than rules. A lot of "should" and not as much "must".

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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

Unread post by Steve B »

In a .76 mile stretch there are 9 grade crossings (Hoover through Liberty), certainly an extreme number.

chapmaja
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Re: City of Ann Arbor considering Quiet Zones

Unread post by chapmaja »

Steve B wrote:In a .76 mile stretch there are 9 grade crossings (Hoover through Liberty), certainly an extreme number.
Not really for a busy town like Ann Arbor. The problem is they could improve their odds of getting the QZ approved if they were to close some of the crossings. Which crossings would you close?

Hoover is the road that provides access to the UofM athletic campus, so closing it would cause traffic problems for hockey, football, basketball, and swimming meet traffic, plus people attempting to access the athletic campus.

Hill St is too busy a street with traffic attempting to avoid Madison or Liberty coming out of downtown, plus it is the road the serves Fingerle Lumber, which likely would have a fit if the crossing was closed. Madison, like Hill provides too much traffic to close.

Main St can't be closed because it is Main St.

Jefferson would be the first street that you could get away with closing a crossing on.

Ashley can't be closed because of it's one way street northbound nature, which is the same reason you can't close 1st street as it is the comparable one way street southbound. William and Liberty are too busy to close as well.

One other reason those roads likely can't be closed is one of the SSM's that is usually required is a median or divider. In the case of most of the streets, putting a divider in would impact traffic flow to adjacent streets, or impact traffic from homes and businesses along the road near the tracks by limiting their access to a single direction.

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