Train horns will sound at crossings from Salt Lake City to Provo

SALT LAKE CITY — A word of warning for all those living near a Frontrunner or Union Pacific railroad line: It’s about to get much louder because train engineers will now be blaring their horns at every railroad crossing from Ogden to Provo.

“It’s just noisy and annoying already,” said Bill English, who owns property right along the railroad lines in Murray.  He said he can’t imagine what it was going to be like now hearing the horns continuously.|

“I’m not happy about it at all. It’s already noisy and it’s already pretty frequent and for us to have additional noise is not something I’m looking forward to,” he said.

According to a joint statement by UTA and Union Pacific, the mandate is from the Federal Railroad Association and concerns safety measures at the crossings dealing with striping, signage, and curbing.  Three of the railroad crossing areas to be fixed are in Lehi.

“Very surprised. I was very surprised to see the email and see this. It’s not anything we ever wanted,” said Luke Seegmiller, Lehi’s traffic engineer who is in charge of overseeing the quiet zones from Salt Lake City to Provo. He believes there was no need to take it this far.

“Shocked that they took it to this level. I think even just a warning that they would do it in a month. Could have been a lot better than just saying [the quiet zone is] suspended. I think we’ll have some residents upset about it,” Seegmiller said.

He said Lehi has three crossings to fix, Vinyard has one, Orem has two, and Utah County has one. He said it could take anywhere from weeks to months to repair, depending on how long changes take.